I certainly understand the concern that my religio-political views — whether one uses the terms “Catholic anarchism,” “anarcho-Catholicism,” “participatory democratic Catholicism,” “libertarian socialist Catholicism,” etc. etc. — are “idiosyncratic.” I try to be patient with such charges, pointing when I can to persons, movements, and teachings in our Catholic tradition as well as among the wider Body of Christ that inspire and support the stances that I take.
It might also help to point to contemporary phenomena such as the recent explosion of books on Christian and other religious anarchisms. I’ve already commented on Tripp York’s Living on Hope While Living in Babylon: The Christian Anarchists of the 20th Century in a review here. This past August saw the publication of a collection of essays called Religious Anarchism: New Perspectives, edited by Alexandre J. M. E. Christoyannopoulos. I’ve received a review copy and will be sharing my thoughts on it soon(ish). Here is the description from the publisher’s website:
Both religion and anarchism have been increasingly politically active of late. This edited volume presents twelve chapters of fresh scholarship on diverse facets of the area where they meet: religious anarchism. The book is structured along three themes:
• early Christian anarchist “pioneers,” including Pelagius, Coppe, Hungarian Nazarenes, and Dutch Christian anarchists;
• Christian anarchist reflections on specific topics such as Kierkegaardian indifference, Romans 13, Dalit religious practice, and resistance to race and nation;
• religious anarchism in other traditions, ranging from Wu Nengzi’s Daoism and Rexroth’s Zen Buddhism to various currents of Islam, including an original Anarca-Islamic “clinic.”
This unique book therefore furthers scholarship on anarchism, on millenarian and revolutionary thinkers and movements, and on religion and politics. It is also of value to members of the wider public interested in radical politics and in the political implications of religion. And of course, it is relevant to those interested in any of the specific themes and thinkers focused on within individual chapters. In short, this book presents a range of innovative perspectives on a web of topics that, while held together by the common thread of religious anarchism, also speaks to numerous broader themes which have been increasingly prominent in the twenty-first century.
Finally, Christoyannopoulos has recently published his own monograph titled Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel. Here is that book’s description:
Christian anarchism has been around for at least as long as “secular” anarchism. The existing literature cites Leo Tolstoy as its most famous (sometimes even as the only) proponent, but there are many others, such as Jacques Ellul, Vernard Eller, Dave Andrews or the people associated with the Catholic Worker movement. Both individually and collectively, these Christian anarchists offer a compelling critique of the state, the church and the economy based on numerous passages from the New Testament. Yet despite the relevance and growth of this literature, no generic study bringing together these different thinkers or reflecting on their contribution has been published to date, because such work involves meticulous searching, compiling and structuring of countless different texts and sources, not all of which are easily accessed. This book, however, provides precisely such a study, and thereby presents Christian anarchism to both the wider public and the wider academic community.
All of these books are intriguing in their own ways. But as I noted in my review of York’s book, I am concerned with the way depictions of Christian anarchism, like much theology, tend to focus on “great thinkers,” mostly of the past, and engage little with current anarchist thinking and action. I have been guilty of this myself to some degree. So as I look at these two recently published texts, I’ll be looking for whether or not they pay attention to anarchist movements of today and in what ways, including whether or not they provide much by way of concrete proposals for radical Christian praxis.
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