Christian anarchism

As a Christian anarchism various attempts are called to connect the Christian faith with anarchist thinking and acting. Depending on the confessional starting point is the concrete embodiment differs greatly.

Central to this is the belief that God - embodied in the teachings of Jesus - the only authority is responsible for a Christian, and the person is therefore bound only to their conscience. Hence the individual anarchism by Henry David Thoreau exercised a great attraction for Christian anarchists.

Most Christian anarchists believe that governments and churches should have no power over them or other people. Many people think that only anarchism is compatible in terms of the rejection of any institutional interpretation of rules of faith with Jesus' proclamation. They expect to be able to communicate directly with God and for that to not need a priesthood. In many cases, the anarchist critique therefore also expressed in a latent or open anti-clericalism.

The Christian anarchism relies on early Christianity with the community property of the Jerusalem church and its claims upon simple living. The largest part of the Christian anarchists is strictly pacifist.

Christian anarchists criticize the development of Christianity and see Paulinism as a departure from the early Christian principles of nonviolence, a simple life and freedom, and criticize the other hand, the Constantinian turn as a combination of state and religion.

An influential book was Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's The Kingdom of Heaven within you .. The Christians among the Tolstojanern tried his ideas in the sense of Christian anarchism develop.

The founders and many activists of the Catholic Worker Movement have an anarchist background, as well as some liberation theology and Christian mystical approaches.

Known representatives

Individualist anarchism The Kingdom of God Is Within You Christian mysticism
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