CALL: Must I Be Anarchist?

December 26, 2011Amaryah Armstrong

Post image for CALL: Must I Be Anarchist?

(Or, Why Are All the Anarchists Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?) 1

Editor’s Note: This piece is part one of a series of call and response between Amaryah Armstrong and Nekeisha Alexis-Baker as they consider what possibilities Christian anarchy can provide for marginalized peoples. The conversation grows out of friendship and mutual respect for each other, and from our commitments to living lives of liberation. We aim for to be an ongoing dialogue that builds on each call and response. As a result, we strongly encourage you to begin at the beginning and follow along from there. You can read Nekeisha’s response here.

I must confess, I simply don’t know what to do with Christian anarchists.

I am anti-domination, anti-capitalism, critical of technology, more than a little suspicious of the nation-state, and all about my citizenship being in heaven and thus having a commitment to radical politics on earth. But still, something about “Christian anarchists” just doesn’t sit well with me. It could be the irony of Christian anarchy being anti-domination and yet being predicated on domination by White men. But this is no different from other Christian identified radical groups. Exclusion is a practice we all participate in. Perhaps it is that I have yet to see or read or participate in sustained Christian anarchist discussions of White supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity that go beyond the niceties of anti-racism/sexism/homophobia 101 training. Or maybe it is because explications of why anarchy is a valuable way to dismantle these systems of evil never seems to offer anything radical feminist, black, and queer Christian critiques have not already begun to deal with.

Let me show my cards here and share honest reflections about my hang-ups with Christian Anarchy: as a Queer, black woman, I have yet to see many reasons why Christian anarchy would provide a space that would do the work that needs to be done to fight White supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity. Critiques of the state and domination are all well and good, but folks who haven’t seen themselves as anarchist have held radical critiques of power, of war, of domination and have also given attention to the ways race, sex, and heterosexism become the occasions for the articulation of dominance and power. What is unique about the way anarchy wants to talk about power and domination that makes it compatible with Christianity? Perhaps you all may try to point me to Mark’s recent primers on Christian Anarchy or some of Jacques Ellul’s work. Thanks, I’ve read those. And I still have my questions.

To me, the tent of “Christian Anarchy” might have more potential as a radicalizing space for white folks to organize under than as a multi-racial tent for a collective of people from the margins and the center. What I mean is this: it is easy to suggest that Christian anarchism provides valuable critiques and resources for how we might live more faithfully to God. But it is not as easy to see and remedy the fact that the resources available on this site themselves are woefully lacking in representation from anyone who is not a White man. And this is not to unfairly castigate the folks who spend much of their time and resources providing a space where radical discussions of Christianity can take place, or to suggest that if something is lacking from this website, I can’t work to fill it (which is part of the reason I’m writing this in the first place). But it is to say, that those voices who get cited as the core of a Christian anarchist movement don’t seem to look like me at all. And they not only don’t look like me (because one doesn’t have to look like me to have powerful critiques of domination), but radical voices who do come from social locations more like mine also become a secondary addendum to that canon. These voices which are, in my eyes, inseparable from any struggle for liberation, become voices that gird up the claims that have already been made by white men, rather than leading the discussion. What I’m trying to point out, then, is the way the narrative already gets structured from the beginning to be one that has to be pried open to include others and the way this inclusive expansion can act more as a way of soothing guilt after the fact than as a catalyst to disrupt the ways Christian anarchy continues to begin from a particular place of domination by white men in order to move towards a more inclusive place. 2 I want to know: how long must this story be told this way?

I also wanted to speak to the strand of anarcho-primitivism that also seems to be popular in Christian anarchist circles. I want to ask how does anarcho-primitivism not become simply another strand of the larger American imagination that has been obsessed with the primitive 3, and particularly the ways black and brown bodies have been seen as closer to primitive because they are not White? 4 What about an anarcho-primitivist narrative, if anything, distinguishes it from the subsuming and homogenizing project of White Western colonialism? What about an anarcho-primitivist narrative calls for transformation of White folks from collusion with White supremacy to solidarity with folks of color? Beyond dreading hair, or buying indigenous jewelry, what about Whiteness is transformed by anarcho-primitivism? I ask this, not because I like picking on White folks, but because the cultural appropriation that takes place within these circles is so rampant, and is done in spaces that are divorced from sustained critiques of White supremacy and accountability to persons of color. Also, I think once we can begin to converse about how Whiteness must become transgressive, bodies of color do not have to be relied on for the articulation of White subjectivity. Now, I’m not trying to be rude or spiteful just for the sake of it (some of my best friends are white guys with dreads), but because I do view Jesus Radicals as a valuable website, and the annual conference as a wonderful resource for radical Christianity. But I also see how this space might never expand beyond a primarily white hetero audience because of its structure and the places power resides in secret.

So, I’ve taken to calling myself a Queer Black Feminist with anarchist impulses and I think that suits me well because anarchy seems to work better as an adjective than a noun, for me, but I wonder what work anarchy does for Christians who might identify in that way? The recent Occupy movement has done a lot to confirm my sneaking suspicion that anarchist ideas are not simply anarchist, but can be radically feminist, queer, black, and Christian. But there have also been issues that have confirmed my sneaking suspicion that anarchist ideas are not radically feminist, queer, black, or Christian. Am I wrong in my perception? I am hoping this will be a conversation that will produce fruitful and respectful conversations.

Notes:

  1. This title is a reference to Monica A. Coleman’s seminal essay, “Must I Be a Womanist?” in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 22.1, 2006, and Beverly Daniel Tatum’s book, “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” ↩
  2. Also, I’m not sure whether the impulse of inclusion is really what I want to advocate for, as I think the process by which voices become included in the canon can often be a reproduction of the problem in the first place. But, for now, this word will have to do. ↩
  3. ohn R. Cooley’s “Savages and Naturals” and Toni Morrison’s “Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.” Can both speak to this. ↩
  4. bell hooks has a wonderful video where she talks about how because Blackness is transgressive, White folks, especially young white men, are able to participate in the culture of hip hop particularly and be seen as transgressive without having to have any actual commitment to black people or radical liberatory politics that would work to dismantle White supremacy. “There’s a way in which white culture is perceived as too wonder bread, right now. Not edgy enough, not dangerous enough. Lets get some of those endangered species people to be exotic for us… when blackness is the sign of transgression that is most desired it allows whiteness to remain static, to remain conservative, and its conservative thrust to go unnoticed. So as we’re having a mounting Fascism in the United States that is perpetuated increasingly by young, moneyed, liberal white people, if they’re wearing black clothes or listening to black music, they can be perceived as transgressive, as radical, when in fact, once again we see a separation between material aspirations and cultural and social interest. So, at any point in time they can drop their interest in blackness and do whatever they need to do to reinforce their class interest, the interest of white supremacy, the interest of capitalism and imperialism” ↩

Tagged as: Anarchism, black, christian anarchism, feminist, primitivism, queer, race, white supremacy

  • ric hudgens

    This is a very insightful set of questions. I want to briefly respond as a way of saying thank you and encouraging the discussion along, even though my concerns are more limited than yours and my insights are not as valuable as your questions. I hear three topics in your essay: (1) the scope of “Christian anarchism”; (2) the structure of “Jesus Radicals”; and (3) the limits of anarcho-primitivism.

    (1) the scope of “Christian anarchism”

    You articulate your suspicion that “Christian anarchy” may be a big tent for white folks, but never be big enough for everyone else. I agree.

    Depth analyses of race and gender are also largely absent among those of us embedded in Christian intentional communities too. “New monasticism” has always looked to me like a club for white people because the concerns you mention are marginal at best.

    You indicate one root of that problem when you write about the “the way the narrative already gets structured”. The “anarchist” narrative, the “communal” narrative, well, hell, the “Christian” narratives have been constructed without a consideration of how race and gender was both formally ignored and crucially formative to what was being told and enacted.

    Narration is an act of power. When the story of anarchism (or Christianity) can be told with only white voices then we have a problem from the start. A key question I hear you asking is how can we tell the Christian anarchist narrative as a “catalyst to disrupt” rather than a “way of soothing guilt after the fact”. Yes, yes, and yes.

    The second key area you address about “Christian anarchy” is how and whether the anarchist way of talking about power and domination is compatible with Christianity. A theological response is crucial here because if Christianity has nothing to say about power then it has nothing to say about any of the other concerns you’ve raised. Unfortunately, Christian discussions of power are usually just as nonexistent or superficial as discussions of race or gender. [And “power” is another one of those areas that make Christian intentional/new monastic communities very uncomfortable. I suspect that is why race and gender are also marginal concerns there.].

    So in my first reading of your essay I hear the topics of narrative and power to be central concerns.

    (2) the structure of “Jesus Radicals”

    I appreciate Nekeisha’s fuller response to you, but want to underline the value and limitations of a “canon” (a list of approved authors or books). Having a canon is valuable in that it provides some indication of a common set of problems and perspectives that has the potential to invite engagement. We struggle on here with the varying levels of familiarity that we all have with “Christian anarchism” (from the “Bible only” to those who’ve read Marx or Bakunin). A canon helps identify some landmarks and it can be really valuable for those just entering into this pseudo-community for the first time.

    But as you indicate so well, this “canon” can also act as a gatekeeper, limiting discussions and topics, and continuing to support an oppressive narrative told only by the limited few, and disinviting others who might want to enter the conversation.

    So for me the discussion is whether having a canon of any kind is valuable or not, and if so, then who should be part of it, and how do we keep revising it to reflect who we are and who we want to be. My concern with the “no canon” approach would be that the default would then become the “Bible only” and that seems problematic if we are wanting to enter into some depth discussions of topics the Bible (at best) only provides an entry point for.

    All of us are drawing upon authors and perspectives outside the JRad canon though and the essays usually indicate a pretty wide breadth of sources and interests. When we had forums it was easier to track all of these.

    (3) The limits of “anarcho-primitivism”

    I share all of your concerns and criticisms here. I find value in the A-P perspective; however, the cultural appropriation and even racialist issues that you note should be major concerns. I know for a fact that many who would self-identify as “A-P” share those concerns.

    Once again, narrative and power and “narration as power” are crucial here too.

    Thank you again Amaryah. This is a provocative essay.

    • Amaryah Armstrong

      Ric, I appreciate your comment. You’re spot on about narrative and power. And, though I didn’t get into it so much (though I might in a later post), I’m especially thinking about theological conceptions of power vs worldly posessions of power and whether how we organize ourselves, especially through the stories we tell, can often work to reify worldly understandings of power instead of disrupting them with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

  • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

    Certainly there is a tradition and collection of contributions that is called “anarchist,” and that may offer much or little to people, depending on how much they can identify with that particular tradition. Is that bad? I’m really asking.

    There is such a drive for inclusion, primarily among liberals, and I guess I don’t understand it very well. Is it bad that there are groups that are primarily feminist, for example, or primarily a gathering of one particular race? I can see the importance of being willing to include whoever wants to participate, but I can also see a group just not being very attractive or not have much that’s helpful for people from different backgrounds or traditions. Is that regrettable? It seems like different groups have different strengths and different contributions that are valuable to different people, and God can work through the variety and speak through the diverse voices.

    You mention the Occupy movement and that seems to me a good example of the effort to try to make sure all voices are represented and all causes embraced. It seems to me to result in a mash that really doesn’t satisfy anyone or represent any view clearly or substantially. And so it comes to nothing. I’d actually rather hear those voices separately, so their particular truth can be stated in a focused and powerful way, powerful because it speaks from a real personal experience unique to that person or group of similar people. Is there an important shortcoming to this?

    I guess I wonder if it is really our place to try to pull it all under one tent. Why not just make our unique contribution the best we can, faithful to the Spirit God has given us, and trust that our voice is one small but important part of God’s grand choral composition? And then also listen and learn to hear and appreciate it all?

    • Chelsea

      Here are a few responses that come to mind regarding your thoughtful questions…. White/male/heterosexual groups often are not honest that that is what they are, but rather represent themselves as being universal/neutral rather than a particular/special interest/identity-based. If this is what the JR participants on the whole want this resource to remain as, and transparently call it that, that might something of an improvement resulting from these honest conversations. Even with this change, it would still not be just one helpful option that “others” could happily encounter and happily leave behind as not-relevant-to-them, because whiteness in general pervades our culture, and so is a climate that everyone has to deal with, even if it is hostile or exclusive to their interests (so JR is kinda just “more of the same” in that regard). I personally think it’s cool to have a dialogical community, one that is full of overlapping and hybrid identities (the way that people themselves are).

      • Amaryah Armstrong

        Hi Paul,

        You seem to be taking my call for analysis of how power works and how the anarchist story gets told as a liberal drive for inclusion (which my 2nd footnote kind of addresses), which I am not really understanding? If you want to reduce every call for analysis of power to liberal inclusionism, then I don’t know how much of a conversation could be had. Maybe if you could point to what about my essay struck you as liberal?

        Also, the particularity of anarchy and Christianity already speak to limited groups of people, but within those limited groups there are people of all races, genders, classes, etc. and it sounds as if you are wanting to say that just because white dudes are primarily represented as anarchist they have more stake to the claim than any other group. But precisely what I’m trying to call in to question is the way the story gets told by asking why accept that story in the first place. I think there is a lot of evidence to the contrary in history that radical Christian and anarchist ideas and principles are largely influenced by the practices and work of queer folks, folks of color, and feminists. So to simply represent anarchism and Christian theology without those voices results in a cooptation of Christian anarchism itself by white supremacist heterosexist patriarchy.

        I’m really not advocating for doing Christian theology or anarchism as identity politics. But what I am saying is that when you ignore the contributions of marginalized folks, you are essentially reifying identity politics but in the invisible guise of white male supremacy.

      • Chelsea

        Actually, I think what this series is highlighting is that there are already “strangers” in the midst of JR, many people who carry various identities that have been constructed as “other,” who are participating but finding it more difficult than it would be if JR continues in this direction of decentering and seeking.

    • Amaryah Armstrong

      Hi Paul,

      You seem to be taking my call for analysis of how power works and how the anarchist story gets told as a liberal drive for inclusion (which my 2nd footnote kind of addresses), which I am not really understanding? If you want to reduce every call for analysis of power to liberal inclusionism, then I don’t know how much of a conversation could be had. Maybe if you could point to what about my essay struck you as liberal?

      Also, the particularity of anarchy and Christianity already speak to limited groups of people, but within those limited groups there are people of all races, genders, classes, etc. and it sounds as if you are wanting to say that just because white dudes are primarily represented as anarchist they have more stake to the claim than any other group. But precisely what I’m trying to call in to question is the way the story gets told by asking why accept that story in the first place. I think there is a lot of evidence to the contrary in history that radical Christian and anarchist ideas and principles are largely influenced by the practices and work of queer folks, folks of color, and feminists. So to simply represent anarchism and Christian theology without those voices results in a cooptation of Christian anarchism itself by white supremacist heterosexist patriarchy.

      I’m really not advocating for doing Christian theology or anarchism as identity politics. But what I am saying is that when you ignore the contributions of marginalized folks, you are essentially reifying identity politics but in the invisible guise of white male supremacy.

      • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

        I’m not aware that anyone’s staking a claim, or ignoring the contributions of others. What’s presented here is what the folks involved have to offer (so far), and I think everyone’s pretty open to admitting it’s not comprehensive or the final word. So there’s important contributions not represented here, great! What are they? Contribute them here (or let us know where they are available elsewhere, if that’s easier), and thus make it a richer resource for us all.

        • Anonymous

          Hi Paul. I am pretty sure you are not aware of this, but your final sentence is problematic because 1) it’s dismissive and 2) it puts the burden on already marginalized voices of making a dominant white space more inclusive to marginalized voices, which is a no-win situation. I deal with this all the time as the anti-racism chair at the place where I work. I’ll be the only person of color in the room in a meeting where we are discussing something that should clearly include a power analysis around race, bu when I get the vibe that the space is not open to actually raise those concerns and I don’t speak as a result, the white people then tell me that I should have said something.

          First of all, why should I be the one to bring it up? Because I am a person of color? Unbalanced racial power affects all of us (albeit in different ways) and is a sin against the body of Christ to which we are all a part. So why isn’t there the same expectation that a white person in the room who knows something about race should be an ally and speak up. I ask you the same question. Why push the burden of making this place a “richer resource” on to Amaryah as if she is the only one person that is missing out on something by Jesus Radicals not having a fuller representation of what it means to be Christian and to be anarchist? If you have names of women, men of color, queer people, people with different abilities, or a combination of any of these, then why not suggest them and offer to make their resources available? Or to find them if you don’t know them off-hand.

          Second of all, the problem isn’t just the site isn’t comprehensive. The problem is that it isn’t even slightly representative. The narratives of anarchism and of Christian may be dominated by white heterosexual men with class standing but they neither of them have been lived out that way, even from the jump. There have always been people whose voices are marginalized in the retelling of these stories that have given voice to, inspired, lived out, and shaped what anarchism and Christianity are. Amaryah isn’t asking that we make some list to end all lists of every person. But this site only lists Dorothy Day as an alternative to the dominant voice. And I explained why that has been the way it is up to this point (and I didn’t do that as an excuse, but as a way of being transparent), but that doesn’t mean the site has to stay that way.

          The problem she is raising, and rightfully so, is that the Jesus Radicals site (I would say less so with the Iconocast) is like that meeting where we are having a discussion about something that should include race, gender and other forms of analysis (being that we are talking about anarchism–which is anti-oppressive at its roots, and radical Christianity, which is striving for that) , but when a person enters the space, the resources we hold up make it seem like that kind of analysis is not really welcome. Correcting that is not the problem of the person who is entering the community. The burden is on this virtual network to see that the lack of representation does not make room for others to enter into–and have the power to shape–the conversation and the lack of representation makes us deficient in our understanding of the breath and depth of what anarchism and Christianity is. Then if we decide we are okay with that, we need to be transparent about it, and if we decide we are not okay with that, then we all need to bear the responsibility for doing something about it.

          • http://www.markvans.info/ markvans

            Just want to throw this suggestion out here… what if we closed the resources sections for now and, simultaneously, asked a handful of folks to help us curate a resources list? I could help get it on the site, but maybe someone from that group could be shown how to publish that stuff. I have some scanned Simone Weil stuff that I’ve never yet published. Others may have access to other people as well. There may even be a way to make it more of a wiki site that we could grant a number of folks editing ability over?

          • Anonymous

            Hey Mark–Personally, I don’t think we have to take things down because that suggests that the stuff we have up there isn’t valuable (I think it is) and it may be interpreted as “hiding” our shortcoming rather than acknowledging and working toward fixing it. It also makes it seem like what is up there is the problem, when I think a bigger part of the issue is what is missing (though I think there are some people we would probably prune from the list).

            So I would be more inclined to go the “transparency and confessional” route and maybe rewrite or make an addition to the landing pages for the “Anarchism”, “Theology” and “Creation” sections that names the fact that the resources in each section represents important but limited contributions to the anarchist/radical Christianity/creation care movements in terms of race, gender, sexuality and class. That we, as the coordinators of the site, are working to make these areas more reflective of the depth and diversity that already shapes these movements, and that we welcome and invite recommendations for resources that can be included. And that although we can’t be comprehensive, we know that we can do more to ensure that more voices that have shaped anarchism/radical Christian theology/creation care be included not out of an act of “political correctness” but out of the knowledge that respecting the multiplicity of voices and allowing them to shape how we think about anarchism/radical Christian/creation care can only deepen our thought and practice.

            Then I think if we do that, we can simultaneously begin to do the background work that you are suggesting while being confessional and allowing what resources we do have to continue being used.

            I think once we begin deciding on the materials that are included in the resources that it would also make sense to be transparent about the criteria that we are using. Because, like the submission guidelines, I think there are things I think we want to “represent” Jesus Radicals, and things that we leave others to write about. That way people will know how we’ve selected once we’ve selected, instead of it becoming a “canon” that appears to be–but isn’t really-neutral.

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            I just meant I don’t know these other marginalized contributions that are not represented, so if she or others do know some, then please share. I don’t think the burden is on her, and I don’t think it should be on you (unless you want it). Each give what you have and want to give, and I’ll do likewise.

          • Chelsea

            Well, it’s not just about what you have and are willing to give, but also what you’re willing to seek out. Non-marginalized folk have the privilege of only needing to know what they already know, whereas marginalized folk have to also seek out and understand foreign/dominant knowledges in order to function in society. So your vision of how people should explore at their own willingness is not a reality for many.

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            Do you think that applies in this situation, Chelsea? The title of the article comes to mind, “Do I have to be an anarchist?” I guess I’d say, no, she (or others) doesn’t have to. I don’t think any of us need anarchist resources to function in the dominant society; if anything they are an impediment, aren’t they? So I don’t see marginalized folks having to seek out this particular part of white culture in order to function in white dominated society. Do you?

            Or is this more a question of being able to function within the “society” of this website?

          • Anonymous

            “So I don’t see marginalized folks having to seek out this particular part of white culture in order to function in white dominated society.”

            I didn’t know anarchism belonged to white culture…Guess I should retire from being an anarchist then.

            Not only is that above line entirely ridiculous but it is an example of the problem that Amaryah is pointing out, which is far beyond the question of whether she should or shouldn’t simply call herself anarchist. She is asking if there is room in this particular anarchist space for other voices–some of which have already shaped the movement and other of which can shape the movement, even if those voices do not call themselves anarchist. Your answer seems to be no, except that your responses appear to be coming out of this separate but equal “white people do our thing, marginalized people do your thing, and it’s all good” sort of logic.

            Except the problem is that anarchism has always been influenced by cultures outside the dominant white European culture, even if it is the dominant white Eurpean culture that has been privileged enough to write and publish about it the most. Hell, anarchism has been influenced by more than human culture, since some anarchists have looked to the rest of nonhuman creation as evidence for how human beings can reorganize themselves. And yet, this space–like many other anarchist spaces–remains dominantly white male anthropocentric. Why is that? That is the question she is raising.

          • http://cimarronline.blogspot.com/2004/05/paul-munn.html paul munn

            I think you’ve misunderstood me, since I don’t think anarchism belongs to white culture either.

            There’s probably nothing I can say at this point that’s helpful, maybe I should just shut up (though I’m not too good at that). I’m not arguing against including non-white anarchist resources here. Please do include them.

            My experience of both anarchism and following Jesus in our society make me feel quite solidly in the marginalized camp. I feel marginalized among most white people, among most males, among most Christians. I guess I think Jesus does bring his followers into one common community, a marginalized community. And I experience that marginalization in my life. In church, at work, in our local community decision-making. I feel pretty marginalized in this conversation, too, and on this site usually. But that’s not a complaint. Marginalized is where we’re supposed to be, in my opinion.

            What I was saying is that I don’t see what we have here that puts any of us in a dominant position (except maybe a few moderators…). What do we have of value that we could keep anyone out of? What do we have that anyone needs that we have access to and they don’t? Maybe I’m just not seeing it.

            It seems to me that most people here are trying to follow Jesus to the margins, and many “marginalized folks” are probably already way ahead of us. If we do have some kind of dominant position, then that’s not a benefit that we should be inviting others into, it’s something we should be letting go of. Isn’t it?

  • Anonymous

    As an anarchist with Christian tendencies I, too, have been trying to figure out what “to do” with Christian anarchists. Since I left Ecclesiarchy in 1978 and went into exile in order to be faithful to God, as I understand God, I have become ever more ambivalent about the extreme intellectual gymnastics required for participation in the radical Christian community. This hyper-intellectualism often masks a spiritual violence and lust for compulsive power almost as great as the powers against which it stands so righteously. A specter of compulsive utopianism looms large over all as well as that of the academic-industrial complex. Liberation theology as a means of niche marketing within the capitalist order and not the actual liberation of anyone outside of the academy.

    Anarchism, in its various manifestations, has always been and remains an essentially rational program aimed at the liberation of humans, and to some degree all sentient beings, from the oppression and violence of the state, an alienated and alienating economic order, and a mythic social contract system used to leverage individual human beings to participate in unspeakable crimes. Anarchism seeks to accomplish the perennial dissolution of these enormities without creating yet another “archy” to take the place of the order to be set aside. Revolution is and must be perpetual at both the personal and communitarian levels.

    The spiritual tradition which proceeds from the person of Jesus indeed has an affinity with many aspects of anarchism. However those affinities cannot overcome the mystical, mythological and determinative nature of the Christian Scriptures, traditions and history. Anarchists who use Christianity to justify their anarchism and Christians who use anarchism to animate their Christianity each do both anarchism and Christianity a disservice.

    Anarchism is justified by reason. Christianity by faith. Both at their best stand side by side in judgment of the Empire, the nation state, the culture of consumption, and everything which oppresses the human spirit and militates against the dignity of every human being on the planet. There can be Christians with anarchist tendencies and anarchists with Christian (and Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Animist,Wiccan, etc) tendencies. While each can enlighten and inform one another anarchists need not, and Christians dare not, ally themselves too closely with each other lest such an alliance repeat the disaster of the Constantinian shift under which humanity has suffered for 1700 years!

    So, no Amaryah, you need not be an anarchist but it sure might help you to follow your anarchist impulses. Anarchism can never overcome its latent (embedded) racism, sexism and homophobia unless anarchists engage in dialogue with queer, black, feminists like yourself.

    Thank you so much for your offering here.

    PS They are sitting together in the cafeteria because they are still children unwilling or unable to tolerate sitting alone. Life will change that.

    • Amaryah Armstrong

      Hey,

      I agree with a lot of what you say, but I would push back on your sharp distinction between anarchism as justified by reason and Christianity as justified by faith. I think, in the end, the faith of Christianity is the foundation for a certain kind of reason that is radically opposed to domination in all its forms. So, I don’t know that anarchism’s reason and Christianity’s faith have to be as opposed as all that Thanks for the comment, though. I appreciate it.

  • Andylewis

    The anarcho-primitivist thing has many levels and a foggy history with JR and christians. I started pushing for these connections years ago on this site and was met with mostly negative responses. Ched Myers had written a few articles and there were a few small discussions going on but it was very much an outlying perspective up until 2007 so all these ideas are relatively new around here. But the A-P critique has caught on over the past few years. One phenomenon I’ve noticed ever since I’ve started thinking about this stuff is that people tend to think of anarcho-primitivism as a communist style program with card carrying members etc..I’m sure people see me as a raging ideologist and I wouldn’t argue too much about that but if there’s one thing I’ve constantly emphasized it’s that there is no program for how to put the anarcho-primitivist critique into action.
    I’ve always pushed the term “anarcho-primitivism” over the more general terms like “green anarchy” the even more generalized “anti-civilization” or the academic “civilization critique” because anarcho-primitivism references certain critiques that green anarchy and anti-civilization/civilization critique don’t necessarily take on. The critique of language for instance is related to the term anarcho-primitivism, whereas marxists and academia tend to emphasize language as a fulcrum for social change anarcho-primitivists take a more pessimistic view of language and its liberatory potential. So there’s some of the problem you have with it and I don’t know that you shouldn’t have a problem with it coming from your perspective as a queer person of color in academia. Language is a big part of the game in the ivory tower. But of course there’s the obvious catch 22 that I’m making a case for a specific term based on what it’s referencing, so obviously the language debate is unavoidable, it’s just a matter of how much the power of language is privileged.
    But my point is that the term”anarcho-primitivism” itself is playing with language in such a way as to undermine the reverence for and privileging of language as an instrument for social change. Anarcho-primitivism tends to privilege insurrectionary action as the preferred mode of social change. My guess is that the racist/ cultural appropriation you’ve connected with anarcho-primitivism is more a relic of the neo-tribalism/ crust punk traveler culture which tends to take on elements of a green- anarchist and anarcho-primitivist critique. I wouldn’t argue that white privilege and cultural appropriation is rampant in many of the sub-cultures that easily take on elements of a green anarchist or ap critique but weighing the critique in and of itself I don’t think there’s an inherent racism/ cultural appropriation element that’s there any more than there is in something like the pacifist/ peace and justice movement. There are quite a few people who delve into elements of ap such as a critique of symbolic culture etc…. who don’t identify with crust punk, world music, neo-tribalism etc.. I think the way many people on this site have engaged with anarcho-primitivist ideas is admirable and a small testament to the potential for taking these ideas in many diverse directions.

    • primaltruth

      I find it hard to be that optimistic with anarcho-primitivism in radical Christian discussion. I would concede that maybe it will not accomplish anything, where there is no direct on-going discussion with goals to develop for accomplishing something. I would go with it, but I have failed in finding such communication. In the past it was suggested to me within JR with this desire to submit an essay, but doing so also does not work, as I find i do not write well enough for having an essay I submit to be displayed. Only should those pursuing this come in to communication together this way can some positive result come about from that, as I have tried to say. There are ideas for accomplishments with good from it. I do not what more I could say to contribute toward that, but would be glad for any other with values as anarcho-primitivist Christian to have in communication, for such effective pursuit. The only thing more for that is to leave an email I use for such. How about you?
      fredsemail@yahoo.com

    • Amaryah Armstrong

      Andy, thanks for this. I especially appreciate your bringing in the critique of language that anarcho-primitivism has. I would definitely like to hear more about that, as I am influenced in a lot of ways by post-structuralist and psychoanalytic thinkers who conceive of the world and the subjects coherence through language primarily. While I have some disagreements with many of their conclusions, I also think the gospel of John’s declaration of Jesus as the Word, brings an interesting twist to psychoanalytic theories of language and thinking about subjectivity as being something that occurs through baptism into the life of Christ who is the Word vs an infants entrance into language as the marker of subjectivity.

  • Gregory

    The whole idea of “labels” is horizontal and it takes the focus off of Christ JESUS of Nazareth and HIM crucified. Labels go horizontal instead of going vertical with our thoughts in not only New Testament thought but to JESUS the person and HIS finished redemptive work. Once this is our attention then social politics happens. Our social spheres our influenced by the Nature of the GODHEAD in us…..divine organism…..not organized corporate labels.

  • Gregory

    John H. Yoder called his “label” that he was raised in a denominational ghetto

  • Chelsea

    “But there have also been issues that have confirmed my sneaking suspicion that anarchist ideas are not radically feminist, queer, black, or Christian. Am I wrong in my perception?”

    No, I don’t think so. That is, many folks who self-identify as anarchists, including myself, often fail to be accountable (in ideas and actions, in intentions and outcomes) to the liberation concerns of people who aren’t just like them. Identifying with a liberation “label” like anarchy is a good reason to invest in building skills in accountability, dialogue, and understanding the multiplicity of liberations. Being more humble about the label and listening to people beyond the label are two good new years resolutions for this aspiring lovarchist gal. Thanks for this series!

    • Amaryah Armstrong

      Thanks for this, Chelsea. I think I’m discovering that my aims and anarchist aims are more overlapping than the dominant narrative of anarchy would have me believe. It is good to know that there are folks who identify as Christian and anarchist who are growing and coming into my life more regularly.

      • Anonymous

        “I think I’m discovering that my aims and anarchist aims are more overlapping than the dominant narrative of anarchy would have me believe.” This statement is basically what allowed me to call myself an anarchist, even when the movement does not live up to expectations. :)

        • Chelsea

          This is a strikingly useful method for reconciling other apparently competing identities, for example my relationship with Catholicism – there is in reality more alignment than one would think if one only listened to that which would prefer not to be aligned with me. Recently someone said about their own struggle of belonging, “my question is not how I can reconcile my sexuality and my faith, but rather whether Scripture allows me to do so in the first place.” Taking the approach of critiquing dominant narratives (and allowing our presence to disrupt narratives) is a very relevant approach to unbinding what is essentially a story/narrative-based faith….and since the Bible is in fact a multiplicity of narratives, it is an amazing resource.

  • John T.

    A white man’s defense of anarcho-primitivism,

    I don’t like the term “anarcho-primitivism” either for the reasons that others have already said. However I note Andy’s defense of the term as a device to undermine the language of the mainstream. Perhaps this is similar to how the word “queer” has been used to undermine its common white connotations.

    Anarcho-primitivism asserts that the hierarchical, technocratic, alienated culture that we find ourselves in is not the highest, most advanced way of life that has ever existed on the planet, as white supremacism assumes. Anarcho-primitivism describes the status-quo as a toxic byproduct of social devolution, disintegration and degeneration – the assumption of cultural superiority is turned upside down. This of itself is a radical critique of white power if white culture’s historical domination of this disintegration is explored, although I suspect most white anarcho-primitivists have not yet fully explored the implications of this.

    It is not the term “primitive” that I find most problematic with this body of thought but the term “anarcho”. Most anarchists today identify all hierarchy, whatever its nature, as bad – it is a holistic critique of social hierarchy. However, the historical anarchist movement has not always been so philosophically dogmatic. The modern anarchist movement grew out of the Russian revolution and Spanish civil war that focused their critique on the state alone and not on hierarchy in general. These wars for life, liberty and land proclaimed that the state is an oppressive and dysfunctional mode to organise society.

    Anarcho-primitivism has an idealised model of tribal/band society, whether this ideal is developed through contact with contemporary tribal indigenous sociologies or through archaeological and anthropological speculation in accord with the white scientific method. One way or another, anarcho-primitivism asserts a tribal model as good.

    If anarchist ideology – as a holistic critique of hierarchy – is imposed onto perceptions of tribal reality, then tribal sociologies such as the authority of elders, the sexual division of labour, land and politics and even (for the vegos) animal hunting must be critiqued as hierarchical and therefore evil. At this point, anarchism becomes just another white colonial power trip, an assumption of moral or ideological superiority.

    However the tradition of anarchism as just a critique of the state dovetails perfectly with tribal sociologies such as elders and mens/women’s business. The tribal social hierarchies are themselves the radical alternative to the state as the model for social organisation.

    Note – “tribal” is a word equally as problematic as “primitive”. I use the term simply to refer to extend families. Tribal law is the bond that keeps extended families together. Any family – white or black, in the city or hiding in the mountains, will develop and manifest a tribal law if it has some stability and continuity of place for just one or two generations.

    And finally, on a bit of a (white) personal note. Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X and Bob Marley (and many others) called for people of African descent to decolonise their mind and re-Africanise their identity in order to free themselves of white demonism. How do we white folk who recognise the demonism of our society decolonise our minds? If not dreadlocks and indigenous jewelry, then what?

    Anarcho-primitivism does not offer a framework for a reformed identity, as perhaps Africa or Aboriginal Australia might be an element in a decolonised black mind. But it does de-construct and overturn the psychological assumptions of white supremacy (as I have mentioned). It is a starting point to decolonisation.

    My ancestors come from Ireland and England and more distantly the tribes of mainland Europe. My indigenous connection to land and tribal society was smashed by empire in exactly the same way that Africa, Asia, the Americas, Australia, etc. were invaded, genocided and colonised in more recent times.

    England was invaded and colonised by Rome at the same time and in the same way as the Roman colonisation of the Middle East as recorded in the new testament. According to British mythology, Joseph of Arimathea came to Britain after the Romans smashed Jerusalem. He set up a Jesus church amongst the Druids and that church joined the Druids in resistance to the Roman imperialists.

    Anarcho-primitivism helps explain all this, it tells my story. It explains both the honourable side of my cultural heritage as well as the side that has been complicit in the imperial/colonial beast. Both these sides – the good and the bad – are normally invisible in white culture because there is no language or narrative to tell this story within the frameworks of white supremacy. The social Darwinist notion of cultural evolution is the myth and language that has replaced our real history of tribal sovereignty and resistance to empire as well as the centralised brutal greed that has been the engine of European “civilisation” for two thousand years.

    While incomplete and inadequate, an understanding of european history and mythology, and an anarcho-primitivist framework are, I believe, part of the process of decolonising white minds. My British and Irish roots and mythology are a basis for a decolonised mind just as Africa is to Africans, the fact that the bible narrative overlaps with my own story is just the icing on the cake (but I recognise that the bible – including the New Testament were written from African cultural roots and frameworks, not European or Asian).

    Of course we run the risk of idealising the noble savage. However, realising the contradictions and failures of our own illusions, as we confront them, is an ongoing process. The back-to-Africa movement of Garvey, X and Marley were also burdened by illusion and unrealistic expectations of what re-Africanisation might mean. Many were hurt and disillusioned in the process of reclaiming their roots and had to modify their expectations and understandings to accommodate hard reality and not just their aspirations and fine rhetoric. It is an ongoing process.

    The most basic element of decolonising a white mind is relationship with (not study of) black people – real contemporary black people, not hypothetical anthropological or political stereotypes. However the basic process of black/white relationship is very problematic. The problem with the status-quo is not that white society has no relationship with black society, it has a very definite relationship. It is the nature of the relationship, not the absence of a relationship that is the problem.

    If white and black engage with each other, the question is on whose terms, rules and language does the engagement occur – black or white? If we try to bring black people into a white church, or if we try to bring black women into the feminist movement or if we try to bring black people into the anarchist movement, as good-willed as we might like to think we are, we are inviting black people into our own white paradigm. Same with the notions of welfare or charity – we are creating a place for the poor within our own cultural form over which we have absolute power.

    I believe, if white people are going to engage with black people as equal then we have to identify as a human being within the frameworks of black identity – that is humanity defined by family, land and culture, not citizenship and status of empire.

    In a white dominated society (such as the U.S. and Australia) the very identity of a white person embodies structural power. A white person must abandon their white identity when they sit down at a table with black people if there is to be any expectation of, or attempt at, equality at the table. I’m not saying this is easy and perhaps it is not even possible. But I see anarcho-primitivism as a real move in this direction, or at least a helpful tool to explain the move. Its got to be better than dreads and indigenous jewelery?

    • ric hudgens

      This should be a stand alone essay rather than a comment not because of its length but because of its quality and insight. Great stuff John T. Thx.

    • Andylewis

      I wouldn’t disagree that the emphasis on anthropology, archaeology etc.. can be problematic but I think it’s a bit too generalized to say that anything other than a classical anarchist approach has colonial elements. Quite a few classical anarchist ideas were incredibly racist and ripe with colonial underpinnings.
      Looking at the social and ecological effects of tribal, horticultural societies isn’t about dismissing or laying blame on any group or especially any culture for ways they’ve adapted to environmental, social factors, it’s about acknowledging that there are some identifiable structural elements of hierarchy and social complexity that don’t seem to exist in the same way if at all in band societies.

      • John T.

        Hello Andy,

        I do not hold any romantic illusions about classical anarchism but it is too simplistic to say they were ripe with colonial underpinnings.

        The sexism of these movements has been well documented but I would be curious to hear what you considered to be racist and colonial elements? As far as I can see, classical anarchism was essentially a European anti-colonial movement.

        Anarchism was very popular amongst Russian tribal indigenous peasants as it acknowledged the equality of peasants whereas the Bolsheviks considered peasants less evolved and genocided millions of them in the interests of the, assumed, more advanced urban working class. In Russia at least, classical anarchism was at its core ant-racist. In Spain, many Basques (indigenous French/Spanish) embraced anarchism in their struggle against fascism.

        Perhaps if we are looking for the connections between anarchism and anti-colonial movements then these aspects of Russia and Spain are solid building blocks. However modern anarchism has embraced only the ideological critique of hierarchy of these movements and generalised that critique beyond the historical context. As such, the ideology has become a standard by which to judge, abstract and disassociate these movements rather than learn from them. (This is colonial thought methodology)

        Regarding your comment – “there are some identifiable structural elements of hierarchy and social complexity that don’t seem to exist in the same way if at all in band societies.”

        Firstly, band society is very complex. There is a lot to understand and do if the state is not making all the decisions for you. As for hierarchy, whether we look at contemporary tribal society, the stories of the ancients or even the observations of colonial anthropologists, we see very definite and entrenched hierarchies in band society, the power of elders is perhaps the most obvious.

        Hierarchy exists in both band and state/techno societies. What is different about these two paradigms is the nature of the hierarchies (and complexities). The main issue of comparison is not hierarchy but centralisation. While all centralisation is hierarchical, not all hierarchy is centralised.

        An example – The most basic power hierarchy in human society is the relationship between adults and children. While some anarchists say that the power dynamic is the primary socialising tool for hierarchy, I say it is the primary socialising tool for whatever we want to socialise our children into – including personal safety, problem solving, sharing and all those other basic things of life. These things are taught via a hierarchical relationship including some kind of negative reinforcement (what do you do when the child wants to touch a hot stove?, we shout “NO!” Hopefully, the child learns about hot stoves first through fear of the reaction of adults before, and as a basis of, their eventual understanding of heat).

        The problem of hierarchy in society is not caused by the natural hierarchy but by the centralised state hierarchy that takes small children and institutionalises them in authoritarian schools for over a decade of their formative years. The hierarchy of the school is not the same as the hierarchy of the family and should not be lumped into the same basket. Of course they are connected, the person socialised in schools will bring their authoritarian tendencies into their relationships with children, but this is not because of the inherent adult/child hierarchy.

        Zerzan of course would say that tribal hierarchies are just a corrupted point in the degeneration of egalitarian society, the primitive building blocks for modern hierarchy and we have to go back further in social evolutionary history to before there were gender or age divisions to find our model human. But this is all just speculation based on an ideological framework – wishing without evidence for the non-hierarchical primitive stereotype. Every human that has ever lived on this planet (except Adam and Eve) was born into the adult/child hierarchy. Hierarchy is the building block for all society. Without the adult/child hierarchy, the child dies.

        It would take too long to fully extrapolate this principle into more mature hierarchies such as the authority of elders as it is obviously a very different situation, but I think you can see where I might go with this understanding – focusing on centralisation of power and the alienation of people from that centre, not hierarchy in and of itself.

        Like with adult/children, “love” is a characteristic of mature tribal hierarchies, something the state is incapable of. This has not been factored into the modern anarchist framework that deals more with western democratic notions of “rights” as a framework for social organisation.

        • Andylewis

          Classical anarchist emphasis on scientific rationalism and industrial production is one glaring connection to colonialism.
          Context, context, context, tribes and bands are different, respect for elders doesn’t necessarily mean hierarchy although in more complex social systems it often does. A lot of the information about lack of hierarchy in band/ gatherer hunter societies is straight from the people in these groups, who are not mythical creatures made up by anarcho-primitivists. Big men, Chiefs, council of elders etc… are connected to more socially complex societies like tribal horticulturalists. But there are always shades of gray and context is crucial.

          • John T.

            Can you give an example of a band society that has no hierarchy such as eldership? (apart from anarchist collectives that have never been able to sustain themselves beyond one generation)

            Classical anarchism emphasises decentralisation, not the dominant (at the time) modes of scientific rationalism and industrialisation. This is what distinguished the anarchists from the Bolshevics in Russia. The anarchists defence of the rights and lives of peasants – including land rights – is a clear challenge to the industrial obsessions of the Bolshevics. Anarchism’s embrace of peasantry in Russia and Spain contradicts the racist “scientific socialism” of Marx, Engels and Lenin that identified the peasants as retarded cultures in need of civilising.

            Bakunin – “The leaders of the Communist Party, namely Mr. Marx and his followers, will concentrate the reins of government in a strong hand. They will centralize all commercial, industrial, agricultural, and even scientific production, and then divide the masses into two armies — industrial and agricultural — under the direct command of state engineers, who will constitute a new privileged scientific and political class.” 1873.

          • Andylewis

            The Hadza and Ju/wasi would be two of the better known examples of bands societies that have no chiefs or big men, they do have old people who are respected.
            Bakunin- “societies whose aims are near to ours must be forced to merge with our society or, at least, must be subordinated to it without their knowledge, while harmful people must be removed from them. Societies which are inimical or positively harmful must be dissolved, and finally the government must be destroyed. All this cannot be achieved only by propagating the truth; cunning, diplomacy, deceit are necessary.”

          • John T.

            I guess it comes down to what respect for elders actually means. Does this just mean politeness or does it have political consequence? The elders are the repositories of knowledge. Knowledge is power.

            The Hadza are well known because of an article in National Geographic, by a journalist apparently on a tourist trip relying on an interpreter.

            The anthropologist Marlowe appears to be the main source of all other information and at least he has learnt the language. He identifies a sexual division of labour, that men dominate women, but slightly (”slight” being Marlowe’s term), camps are given the name of senior men and good hunters are “usually more esteemed” (Marlowe says this is “subtle”).

            These observations by a white outsider are open to much interpretation and one could just as easily use these things as evidence of hierarchy.

            Also – Hadza sociology is as much a product of their recent dispossession from traditional land and social breakdown as it is a reflection of the old ways. The process of colonisation always involves the elimination of indigenous power structures, this would also be the case in the process of dispossessing these people from all but a small remnant of their traditional land long before the anthropologists (and tourist operators) got to them. Broader federations of bands/camps including seasonal festivals and councils would have produced a leadership beyond just the small camps. But the broader land has gone, the broader social connections have gone and as a result of colonial interventions, previously allied tribes have been turned to mortal enemies. The absence of broader tribal structures does not necessarily mean this is the structure that evolved over a long time.

            The undisturbed, undiscovered tribe is an illusion, they are always heavily impacted long before the anthropologists arrive.

            I do not share the opinion that these people are somehow radically different from other hunter gatherer societies and I certainly don’t think they can or should be used as proof of any ideology on the basis of their perceived difference from other indigenous perspectives and voices.

            We should listen to tribal voices to learn from them, not the opinions of anthropologists about tribal people.

          • Andylewis

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_society
            http://www.jstor.org/pss/2801707

            I don’t think the Hadza are radically different from other hunter-gatherer societies either, generally hunter- gatherers are band societies w/o codified leaders. Of course there are adaptations having to do with pastoralist, agrarian neighbors, many if not most existing hunter-gatherer societies have been impacted by missionaries before anthropologists, that’s common knowledge. It’s really not disputed that band societies were the earliest form of human social structure, tribes are a later adaptation. James Woodburn is the leading anthropologist/ ethnographer connected with the Hadza. The resources above may help clarify some things

          • John T.

            “band” and “tribe” are two words created by anthropologists. Anthropologists may say bands do not have codified hierarchies because these societies have holistic codes very different from and largely invisible to the world of the anthropologist.

            The theory that “band” is the oldest society that evolved and was corrupted into “tribe” is just an ideological assumption with absolutely no evidence at all.

            My comment about tribal enemies was not about “pastoral agrarian” neighbors but about tribal groupings, traditional kin just like and relatives of the Hadza, who have either been co-opted by the Tanzanian government to engage in war with the Hadza to eradicate them (the Tanzanian government considers them pests) or groups who have been given Hadza land by the Tanzanian government.

            That which differentiates the Hadza from their neighbors is not gradual evolution through contact with outsiders but by sudden and bloody impact by the Tanzanian government on both the Hadza and their neighbors.

            I haven’t come accross Woodburn before. Here is a link to the full article that you referred to. http://libcom.org/files/EGALITARIAN%20SOCIETIES%20-%20James%20Woodburn.pdf

            I can see why his hypothesis is attractive to Zerzanists but it is important not equate an anthropologists hypothesis with the social reality of indigenous Africans.

            I notice he too speaks of egalitarianinsm “with certain limited exceptions”.

            There is much in his essay to be challenged, too much for here. However I will point out that his theory of immediate and delayed return is flawed in that he does not seem to consider knowledge of country as a valuable thing in the same way he identifies nets and land ownership.

            Firstly, even if there is no notion of posessive property, a person must know where and how to fish or hunt and also how and where to avoid the signifcant dangers, like big animals, poison plants etc. One cannot go freely around the bush picking any fruit. One must have knowledge of what is good to eat and what is dangerous to eat.

            I repeat, Marlowe identifies a higher esteem to good hunters. This is not just because people admire their skills like Westerners admire a sports star. The good hunters teach (or don’t teach) everyone else how to hunt or improve their hunting and as such their “ownership” of knowledge is every bit as significant as “owning” land.

            Also, it is a racist assumption that groups such as the Hadza simply glean free resources from the land. The land must be managed including culling animal species, irradicating weeds, oxygenating soil, propagating plants and many other ways of looking after land. Hunter gatherer people are agriculturalists and pastoralists, they just do it a different way and without fences.

            Secondly, the Hadza have been at war with the government and neighboring tribes defending their traditional land rights – they obviously have a possesory relationship with their land. However indigenous land rights have nothing to do with western notions of property and land ownerships and no comparison can be made. For a start, indigenous land is owned collectively. Within that collective their are no exclusive property rights of themselves however access to land is determined by knowledge of land (such as I mentioned above).

            I would urge you to look at some Australian Aboriginal and Native American sociologies (probably lots of others too but I know a little bit about these two). On the one hand there are many anthropological perspectives, not just a small handfull as with the Hadza. But more importantly, there are English speaking Aboriginal people who can explain their own reality in language that we understand. I still find white speculative anthropology fascinating but I find more fascinating the Aboriginal critique of anthropology that puts into context the data that anthropologists find, even if it may contradict the hypotheses and conclusions of the anthropologists.

            The missing voice in the discussion about the Hadza is the Hadza themselves.

          • John T.

            An Australian Aboriginal critique of the science of anthropology.

            “The Enlightenment, Imperialism, and the Evolution of Museums” by Gary Foley.
            http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/essays/essay_3.html

            I am still very supportive of anarcho-primitivism, especially in the terms Ched Meyers speaks. But my concerns, especially about Zerzan, is that the issues identified in the above article have not been addressed and the body of A.P. anthropological thought is itself a manifestation of the colonial paradigm.

          • Travis

            Thanks for that link.

            I feel like I remember that Woodburn essay kind of addressing what you all are talking about in this thread, but I’ve been reading out of Limited Wants, Unlimited Means sequentially and I probably have all the essays muddle now. Maybe it was “beyond the original affluent society”, which you can find a pdf of fairly easily. Also, http://www.blackandgreenpress.org/pamphlets.html has nicely formatted versions of a few of these essays.

          • Andylewis

            If you think all hunter-gatherers are agriculturalists & hierarchical and it’s racist to assume otherwise I really don’t know what to say.

            I’m really not just basing everything on the Hadza, Check out the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers for a good overview of many foraging/ gatherer-hunter groups. Once again, i’m not making this a hierarchy of indigenous cultures or indigenous resistance, as you seem to think I am. The point of looking at the differences in scale, structure etc.. is to get an idea of where power comes from and how it is dealt with. And as I’ve said all along there are a lot of gray areas, context is crucial.

          • John T.

            Andy,

            1/ Hunter gatherers have specialised knowledge of land, they work the land to premeditated plans, they significantly impact on land to the point that the landscape is created by them, they intervene into natural process to increase yields, they create plantations of particular plants, they create fodder pastures for particular wild animals. Where they differ from “agriculture” is in the factors of centralisation/decentralisation and private/communal land rights, not the evolution and sophistication of technique. In fact, because of the reduction of genetic diversity in monocultural and fenced (or exclusive territory) farming, this system is less sophisticated than the multidimensional and bio-diverse ecological systems that hunter gatherers need to understand in order to harvest from their land.

            2/ This link gives an indication of the social forces of the twentieth century that has impacted on African “bushmen”.
            http://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/csq/article/the-hunter-gatherer-myth-southern-africa
            It is an interesting comment on outsider perceptions of hunter gatherers, but it I draw it to your attention as an explanation of how rapid colonisation has created the differences between different groups of people and not any social evolution based on different traditional modes of economic production. The difference between a hunter gatherer, a herder, a feudal peasant, an urban worker or a soldier are just the luck of the draw in how the twentieth century unfolded. But all have been just as impacted by colonisation as the others.

            3/ Traditional social structure such as the role of elders, decision making, language and cultural concepts, relationship between men and women etc. that has evolved over many generations does not simply disappear when the mode of production changes. Tribal culture and law is the unifying point of isolated bushmen, feudal peasants and urban workers, a sovereignty that transcends both the state and the mode of production.

          • Andylewis

            I don’t know what you’ve been reading in my posts, but I’ve never said anything about hunter-gatherers not having extensive knowledge of the land/ ecosystems where they live.
            As to whether or not they create the ecosystems they live in, I don ‘t think you can compare the swidden horticulture of the amazon or SE Asia to the fire dependent ecosystems of North American indigenous groups and those adaptations have even less to do with the arid environments of the Hadza and Ju/wasi.
            John Bodley’s “Hunter-Gatherers and the Colonial Encounter” answers a lot of your skepticism about the authenticity of band society and or hunter-gatherers.

          • Andylewis
          • John T.

            Andy, I made the comments about farming in response to your statement – “If you think all hunter-gatherers are agriculturalists & hierarchical and it’s racist to assume otherwise I really don’t know what to say.” – I just fleshed the idea out a bit more.

            The Susan Kent article describes a controversy. The challenge for anarcho-primitivists is to decide what side of the controversy we stand on. Having said that, the Kent article represents a controversy within the academic anthropology industry and the voice of the studied people themselves is still absent from this overview.

            As an anarcho-primitivist, I say that hierarchical, represented, institutionalised modes of knowledge gathering, recording and sharing is of itself a dysfunctional illusion – the state/bureacratic paradigm applied to knowledge.

            For anarcho-primitivists – the point of learning of tribal sociology should be connection with tribal people. While this knowledge may not entail the sort of scientific accuracy that anthropologists pretend that their hypotheses represent, it is of itself a far deeper, meaningful and usable knowledge than the scientists’ data.

            Anarcho-primitivism should not be just another perspective within a contained colonial discussion (as I suggest Zerzanism can tend to be), it needs to be of itself a different kind of discussion.

          • Andylewis

            Of course there’s a difference between the academic framework of anthropology and AP, but there’ is a lot of basic human interaction that’s documented there and I don’t think anarcho-primitivists need to be going to live with hunter-gatherers. There have been recent connections between anarcho=primitivists and indigenous groups in the South West US. Those connections have been noted as a major threat by people like Henry Kissinger.

          • primaltruth

            The models for primitivism that are found among contemporary tribes are not Christian, a Christian model is lacking … so far, from what I know. I have come to a conclusion that tribal living works, and following Christ in truth surely works, and a synthesis of tribal living with following Christ in truth would surely work, combining the most desirable in both things. With this using personal living out responsible Christianity with its values, among such as a tribe, there is minimized need for leadership from tribal persons, when following Christ and being subject to God are what is called for. Elders might have a minor role.

            There has been call for a way for communication together without interruption to actually move toward positive goals, as has been missing,, through forum, network, or a form of internet group. I have offered an email I use for this, with the formation of such a thing in mind, with participation in it for any of us pursuing goals to be reached with these ideas also taken into account. Issues of human need is not something that needs to be neglected, and certainly not animal liberty.

          • John T.

            Hello PT,

            I suspect the reason that tribal societies have not been Christian is because Christianity itself is a construction of the Roman empire and been the religion of empire since the the emperor Constantine. It is the religion that the Romans brought to Britain, it is the religion that the Spanish, English and French brought to the Americas, it is the religion that the British brought to Australia. For the entire history of Christendom, Christianity has been firmly located amongst the invaders, colonisers, genociders and slave traders as a consciousness and mechanism to expand and reinforce European colonisation.

            Tribal societies have bees stabbed, shot, poisoned, infected and imprisoned by Christians, tribal spirituality and mode of life cannot be judged by Christian standards.

            However, while “Christianity” has been anti-tribal since its adoption by empire, Jesus and all the biblical characters (except the gentiles) were tribal. Jesus was of the tribe of Judah, one of 12 tribes created by Moses law. Their land rights are based on Abraham’s covenant, Moses law and the Kingdom of David. Jesus proclaimed the Jubilee – the restoration of tribal land rights. Matthew and Luke have extensive geneologies linking Jesus to the tribal geneologies of the old testament.

            You cannot create a fusion between Caesar’s religion and Jesus’ tribalism – this is exactly what the Pharisees tried to do and for which they received much criticism from Jesus. Nor can you create a fusion of the contemporary religion of empire (christianity) and contemporary tribalism, they are antithetical at their core.

            What we should do is abandon the imperial interpretation of Jesus and the bible and embrace the tribal Jesus as per the perspective of the bible writers.

            It should be noted that many tribal indigenous people (in Australia at least) have embraced Christianity but the theologies that are emerging from this movement are far from orthodox in that they directly challenge the theologies presented to them by white missionaries in previous generations. However they are a living breathing example of Christian tribalism.

  • Anonymous

    Very eloquently written. I am still waiting though for someone within the critique of dominant white male systems to elaborate on those exact systems. Are all white male’s the same? Is everyone who we think white truly white? Is white-ness based upon skin color or deeper traits, such as power, privilege, and status? And the other big question? Why the hell should white males care that anyone thinks they’re “such and such”, fill in the blank? This reaffirms that both liberals and conservatives as identified in the U.S. are almost the same people with their “Principled ideals” about how Constantine should be running things politically and socially. It’s a complete reaction against the Enlightenment, by only utilizing the tools of the Enlightenment which are reason and experience, i.e. sensing what I feel or know. Christianity on the other hand comes completely from outside our experience, but then enters into our experience as a friend. It’s so much gentler and quieter than people demanding that their knowledge is truth and everyone else needs to submit to it, or claiming to have the “keys” to inner knowledge, reserved only for those in elite, academic, institutions. It must be nice for the people who live, work and study there, but does not really do any service to the people paving the roads, driving trucks, or working in everyday occupations, simply trying to survive. I love how higher education is completely elitist and claims to be so inclusive. We’re inclusive as long as we have enough money to go there. Or can think “critically enough”. Oh, Socrates and Plato would be proud.
    If Jesus is actually real, then Christians do not have to submit to the powers of imperialism, partriarchy, and dominant identities of race, because we have been formed as the “Sanctorium Communio” and we can live as the eschatological people of God in the present. We can live as the present restoration of all things in Christ. We can be formed by politics which is not of the world, as John Howard Yoder, Hauerwas, and others have detailed. “Christians can build a new order as a community of faith without smashing the old.” (Hauerwas–this statement also seems to be critical of anarchy) Why don’t we “smash the old”, because people live there and God is a God who “Sees”. God sees the ways people manipulate others, use their power as a sword, and God will in the end have the final word.
    Also, in my opinion, the prophetic voice which the author seems to possess is always “one” with the people to whom they are prophesying and will in the end, suffer along with those same people. We can not point and say, “See, you need to live like this or that without living that way also.” It seems as though we have allowed the value systems of the world based upon zero sum strategies to determine our existences. As if we simply say, “Are you for or against?” Those are the two choices!

    “Then he (Pilate) released Barabbas to them. But he had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.” Matthew 27.26. Barabbas, the zealot, the anarchist was completely committed to the overthrow of the Imperial Roman Empire in favor of the complete restoration of Israel. And we continue to do the same today. Peace!

  • http://naturalaw.failuretorefrain.com jurisnaturalist

    First and foremost I think that the goal of Christian anarchism is similar to yours in that it seeks primarily justice, after identifying state, church, and other institutional structures as systematic generators of injustice. Free markets often get included in this list, but I think that is wrong.
    Further, I think many approaches suffer from the Nirvana fallacy. This is a term from economics, coined by Harold Demsetz. The problem has to do with fomulation of ideals rather than approaches. We cannot get to anyone’s ideal just state. There is no way to sufficiently constrain people whose motives have been twisted from harming others. Injustice will always occur. Institutions which systematically generate injustice may be improved, but the road to getting there is seldom described.
    Any system of injustice will create oppressed peoples and privileged peoples. As time goes on, however, the effects of the injustice get spread, both the costs and the benefits. Slavery imposed horrific costs upon a select class, whether in Roman times, in colonial Caribbean times, or in America. It also created concentrated benefits. However, over time, costs spread throughout society. First, economically. Chattel slavery is a most inefficient way to produce sugar. But also, living in a society in which slavery is normative damages the imago dei in all of us. The benefits are also dispursed over time. The man who first enslaves another human has robbed them of their lives. But the man who buys the slave for use on a farm winds up spending a good portion of the expected future benefits of owning the slave in the initial purchase. To suddenly emancipate all slaves without compensation would rob the man who purchased the slave without in any way punishing the man who first robbed the slave of his liberty.
    In economics we talk about such a situation as a “transitional gains trap.” That is, the gains from the injustice were captured during the transition to injustice, and to transition out of the injustice would simply impose a new injustice on someone else.
    Thanks be to God there is a way out of this trouble!
    Jesus Himself demonstrated this way to us, in His personal sacrifice. We were all unjust in our sins, and yet he died for our sins, paying the price of our unjustness, freeing us from injustice, and simlutaneously redeeming those who had done injustice to us!
    This is the way we must imitate. The path to justice, the way to do justice as Christians, is through personal sacrifice. Any attempt to reform, amend, or destroy the institutions around us through political means serves only to impose the injustice on someone else. But as believers, we are to redeem even the oppressors. This is among the most offensive of all Christian doctrines, particularly to those who have been oppressed. Indeed, inasmuch as Christian Anarchists of various stripes have recognized and adopted this doctrine, we become unattractive to oppressed peoples who desire retribution for the injustices which they have suffered. This may, in part, explain why Christian anarchism is easier for white men than for others.
    The way to justice is through sacrifice. The movement for abolition in Great Britain served more to get Evangelicals permanently ensconced in Parliment than to free slaves. The real heros were those who purchased and freed slaves sacrificially.
    But, wait, wouldn’t this only encourage slave drivers to bring more slaves? Initially, yes. But this point only serves to highlight a more essential miracle. That the act of sacrificing for the sake of others’ justice has a transformative effect on the oppressor. If more Christians had sacrificed in order to free slaves through peaceful, subversive means such as I have described, then perhaps more lives could have been transformed. As it was only very few adopted this approach, Anabaptists such as Quakers and Mennonites being among the best, though even few among these sects participated. There is injustice in the world only inasmuch as Christians are not sacrificing to change things.
    Another will object that there will never be enough Christians who do adopt the right way to have a meaningful impact. This might be true. And here again, I will offend. God is sovereign over the suffering of His innocents. This world is not the end. We are not promised justice in this life, but in the life to come. To that effect then, it seems the primary purpose of acting for justice is to rescue not the oppressed, but the oppressors! That the oppressed are redeemed becomes a mere by-product of rescuing villians!
    Here we must remember that we are all the villains. And this is difficult to do. We want to feel good about doing justice. We want to be deserving of a reward for doing good. We want it to be about us being the good guys. But when we remeber that we were once sinners, we see that sacrifice for the sake of redeeming the enslaved is merely our reasonable act of worship. None of this is satisfying for those who believe that it is possible for us to change the world and to create a better earth. Indeed, almost all of it is offensive and humiliating to the prideful mind of men. Again, all of this is particularly offensive to those who have been oppressed.
    It is likewise offensive to the state, which becomes strictly a wicked influence, incapable of redemptive good. The only hope then for those who are oppressed are those who have previously enjoyed privilege, but have repented and become willing to sacrifice for the sake of the oppressed. This leaves the previously oppressed in a state of debt to the previously privileged at first glance. This will not do.
    What is required is a right understanding of what makes it possible for a person to willingly sacrifice for the sake of the oppressed, that is, regeneration. But Anabaptists are light on regeneration, preferrign to focus on the sanctification which occurs in community. Here, I come across as Reformed. Apart from regeneration which is the consequence of an existentialist encounter with God, repentance, and acceptance of God’s justification, there can be no change in the heart of men and women which makes them capable of anything other than self-interested motivation. If they do good it is for reward, or to assuage guilt. It is never freely given apart from regeneration. There is also never any joy in it.
    And further, for those who are redeemed, we are not then required to sacrifice for every person under oppression whom we encounter! Jesus Himself did not heal every sick person, nor exorcize ever demon, nor tear down every wicked institution. He only did what He saw His Father in heaven doing, and we are only to do the same though listening to the Holy Spirit.
    Ah, now having added this Charismatic element I have nearly absolved myself as a white man from all responsibility to the oppressed! Surely this is evil! But it is only evil inasmuch as God Himself does not immediately come down from heaven and set all aright. He tarries, not because He has wicked motives, nor because He is ambivalent about the suffering of His innocents (notice again whose innocents they are!) but because He desires that all should come to repentance.
    To those of us who become too focussed on injustice rather than God’s sovereignty this will always be a difficulty. We must always rightly understand the motive to justice coming as a consequence of regeneration, and accept full responsibility for doing justice, in

    • http://profiles.google.com/emanationster Sara Harding

      It appears that you are reasoning from the assumption that Jesus’ primary mission was to die to save sinners. But Jesus’ own description of his mission at it’s outset, by quoting from Isaiah at the synagogue in Nazareth, coupled with his mother’s Magnificat, John the Baptist’s witness, and his father’s, Zacharias, to name a few from the top of my head, suggest to me a far different perspective than the individualistic, classic Protestant ordo salutis. Not that individual regeneration is negated, but it does not explain all the complexities of the Gospels, IMO.

  • JamesH

    In Alexandre Christoyannopoulos’ book on Christian Anarchism he gives an overview of some folks he considers to be the “main protagonists of Christian anarchist thought.” Of the many names and profiles he gives, only two are women (Dorothy Day and Nekeisha Alexis-Baker). I believe everyone else he lists are white men. I know some of the comments have been focusing on the lack of diversity on Jesus Radicals, so I thought it was interesting that a recent published attempt to give a lay of the land for Christian anarchy also reflected primarily white male thinkers – which maybe indicates that this is not an issue unique to the JR website?

    For me (and I am a white guy) the primary reason that I started exploring Christian anarchism has to do with the critique of the state. For a long time my political imagination was dominated by the state – I thought that if you wanted to promote justice and overcome oppression that you just needed to pass different laws and vote for better presidents. That seemed to be what a lot of the Christians I knew who were interested in justice seemed to think too. But then I began to see how that kind of political action and the state itself contradicted my Christian pacifist convictions. Then through some of the resources I discovered on the Jesus Radicals site (the William Cavanaugh stuff was particularly helpful to me) I began to really rethink my understanding of what political engagement might look like for a Christian, and began to really see the tragedy of the modern nation-state.

    I’m not super familiar with a lot of what’s going on in feminist theology, black theology, or queer theology. So I guess I’m curious to know to what extent critiques of the state come up in those liberationist theological traditions?

    • Amaryah Armstrong

      Well I think what is primarily present in queer, black, and feminist critiques of the state is deep analysis of how the state gets maintained through white supremacy, through patriarchy, and through heterosexism–these are the legs and the arms of the nation state that uphold coercion through actively working to divide those who otherwise might work to gather to construct a new society. Just off the top of my head, I think Emilie Townes work “Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil” has a lot to offer a Christian anarchist conversation, and she is one of the few theologians I know who wrestles with America as empire and connects that to the inner workings of race, sexism, heterosexism, etc.

      In light of this larger conversation, though, I think I’m going to throw together a brief list of some folks.

      • Anonymous

        Hey Amaryah…I think I recall reading some of Townes work for a seminary class where I explored womanist theology of the cross. Thank you for pointing us to this particular article (or book?) I will have to track it down. A brief list would be a helpful starting point and I would certainly appreciate knowing what resources you’ve been influenced by. But I also want to encourage people to do their own homework as well. The resources are often readily available if people want to find them.

      • Chelsea

        Traci West also comes to mind, along with Andrea Smith whose Native feminism is explicitly decolonial and therefore anti-state. Smith’s scholarship is an interesting case in point about labels, in that she does a lot of work from her Christian point of view without forwarding the “C” label (much less the “C-A” label).
        White supremacy, sexism, and heterosexism undergird state power and state projects, as ideologies which support systematic inequalities by seeking to make inequalities appear natural – based in naturally-occurring differences between people (in bodies, identities) that necessitate categorization and ranking. The large-scale state-sponsored injustices of expansion, colonization, imperialism, war, and privatization depend on narratives and systems of interpersonal differentiation, violence, and cultural supremacy.

        • Anonymous

          I read West’s “Disruptive Christian Ethics” as part of a seminary ethics class. Very good resource.

  • Chelsea

    For all the self-identified “white guys” in these threads, speaking as another white person I thought it might be helpful to clarify that whiteness is not merely a skin color or identity (which it is), but also an ideology, a culture, and a politics. It’s a facility with dominance that can actually be useful if it is politicized rather than naturalized, particularized rather than universalized, and marked rather than invisibilized. It’s not something to repent of or defend, but a position to understand just as thoroughly as all those who not in that position but still subject to the norms of whiteness understand it.

  • John T.

    Hello Chelsea,

    Can you give an example of how the white facility can be useful?

    I am not sure you can differentiate between white identity and white ideology, culture and politics. Whiteness has nothing to do with skin colour. (Irish republicans and Basque separatists are black and Obama is white). It seems that normative invisibility and universalisation are key elements of the white identity, if these things are removed (repented from) there is no longer a white facility.

    • John T.

      p.s.

      I believe repenting of whiteness is exactly what Jesus was talking about when he said we must be born again. Jesus calls the tribal indigenous Hebrews to abandon the culture and structure of the gentiles (the colonisers) and re-embrace the essence of tribal indigenous sovereignty (Kingdom of God) – in all its many personal and collective dimensions. The consciousness of empire is abandoned and the free individual is reborn.

      Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus tells the same story – the Hellenised Pharisee born away from the holy land and doing Caesar’s bidding abandoned his former identity (including Roman citizenship) and re-embraced the essence of his indigenous identity and spirituality.

  • http://profiles.google.com/emanationster Sara Harding

    I would venture to define Christian anarchism two ways. One, as the intersection between the class struggle that has arisen from industrialization, identified by Marx, from which there revolves a constellation of white, male European scholars seeking to reconfigure the industrial power arrangement, and an approach to the Gospels that sees Jesus as identifying with the poor in this particular class struggle.

    The other is more broad, recognizing the vast number of ways that various groups have been “otherized”, defined by a dominating narrative that reaches beyond the working class struggle, and recognizing that the conversation needs to be opened, not to include these groups in a tokenizing way, but to be led by them, and also to be allowed to be imported into them. Anarchism here would be a critique of all systems of privilege, and the Christian intersection here would be how/to what extent Jesus’ followers should reject and confront these systems.

    The second can flow out of the first, but it can also flow from other places that confront privilege, as Amaryah pointed out, without bearing the anarchist epitaph.

    The connection to the anarchism of the industrial struggle opens up difficulties in the conversation of these various intersections. It is not that being white, male, or a scholar automatically demonizes anyone that fits this description. But there was an obvious trend, in classic anarchism, for the leaders of this movement to mimic the imperialism of their antagonists with this one tactic. They presumed that they could formulate a system and expect everyone to follow it.

    I don’t think I’ve added to the conversation at all, but I’ve just written this down to try and understand the conversation myself, and be corrected along the way.

    • Anonymous

      Hi Sara–thank you for adding these points. I find them valuable for the discussion :)

  • http://profiles.google.com/emanationster Sara Harding

    editing mistake, sorry

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