No Gods, No Masters: Organized Religion and Statism by downdurnst

In the book ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ by George Orwell, we see a dystopian world in which ‘the Party’ controls every aspect of thought, history, literature, and culture in general.  History is re-written constantly (‘we’ve always been at war with Eurasia’) and morality and action are carefully and deliberately set down for each member of the society to follow.  While many dystopian future novels have been written, novels about authoritarian governments in complete and utter control of society, it is Nineteen Eighty-Four that has become the cultural representation of the totalitarian State reaching it’s zenith.

As anarchists and libertarians, the concept of the State as ‘Big Brother’ defines the polar opposite of everything we stand for: rigid, uncompromising, inflexible, controlled, judgemental, morally superior, etc – the yin to our yang of freedom if you will.  So of course, in our activism and education, we work to open people’s eyes to the slippery slope that is the Police State, to the dangers of government and to the will to freedom that is the necessary starting point on the road to a more just and liberated society.  Whether you self-define as a minarchist, anarchist, libertarian, etc, one thing we can all agree on: freedom can only exist in a society where the people themselves desire that freedom.

After all, the reason that every revolution in the past has failed is that post-revolutionary members of society simply went right back to setting up their own forms of control, usually with the noble thought that ‘this time, we’ll do it differently’.  The Statist impulse runs deep in humanity, after centuries and millennium of inculcation to the often repeated idea that someone has to be in charge.  More than the direct end of the government itself, our aim as lovers of liberty is to make people aware of the fact that freedom is both an obtainable, and desirable goal.  Most anarchists recognize one fundamental truth: if enough people want to be free, then no force on earth can stop them from being free.

But I’d argue that there is an elephant in the room here, one with impulses as deep, and control as ironclad as any government could ever have.  The systems in place in this particular elephant are as deeply ingrained in it’s members as any authoritarian government could want; indeed, in the maddest tyrants wildest dreams, they couldn’t hope to match the devotion to a set of masters as exemplified by this particular system.

I of course speak of organized religion.

Now let me preface my remarks a bit: I have no overwhelming issues with religion itself.  The need to believe runs deep in people, and while I think that in and of itself belief can have harmful effects (in the same way that Sam Harris argues), I think they are minimal overall.  While I myself am an atheist, I don’t see any incompatibility between freedom and religion as a whole.  In the course of my anarchist studies, I’ve met Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist anarchists just to name a few.  And in fact I’d argue that to a large degree the various canon’s and scriptures of most religions are actually MORE compatible with anarchist philosophy then they are with Statist.  Christian anarchism, for example, has a long history with Leo Tolstoy being the father of it (even though he never specifically called it that).  In support, various scriptural passages seem to point towards Jesus as being openly opposed to the governments of men, with perhaps my favorite being Acts 4:19 “We must obey God as ruler rather than men”.  This concept within Christianity, that the only authority is the Ultimate authority, rings true with anarchist principles, and negates the authority that any man would have over another.

No, what I take issue with is not the idea of religion itself but rather the organizations that seek to control those religions, that codify beliefs as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, and seek to suppress dissent.  The Catholic Church, the LDS, all the way down to the David Koresh’s of the world – all of these seek an unprecedented level of submission from their followers, usually on pain of being excommunicated.  It’s an interesting transition, but in effect these religious organizations are making a transfer of power from the deities that the scriptures/canon’s say hold the power, to themselves as the supposed ‘final authority’ on those very writings.

The parallels to Statism cannot be ignored, and indeed all of our efforts as lovers of liberty will be to no avail if we DO ignore them.  Consider the mechanisms of the State, those attributes and actions we can point to as the primary evils of the State..  Just to list a few:

• Forced/indoctrinated belief in something ‘more important’ than any individual or individuals.
• The claim to be the authoritative ‘final say’ in all matters.
• Suppression of dissent, or ‘dangerous’ language.
• Organizational pressure to conform, to be a good member of the whole
• Extrapolating laws and punishments from the above supposed authority

These are but a few, but they are some of the primary hallmarks of the State.

Now ask yourself this: would any of those characteristics feel misapplied to a religious organization?  On the contrary, those same sets of controls and attributes are as much a hallmark of an organized religion as they are of the State if not more-so.

Another hallmark that could be added to that list above is a knee-jerk defense of the organization as being just, right, etc.  The quote at the beginning of this essay becomes readily applicable to both State and Church: it truly is the unquestioning, blindly obedient that we as anarchists should fear most, even more than ‘the Party’ leaders themselves.

So what do I suggest with this?  I suggest that it’s time that anarchism in general begin to look at ways of bringing the religious into the fold, without the trappings of religion itself; and I think that we are at a point in history, at least in the west (and even in the Muslim world I’d argue), where more and more people are ready to stand up and say “my beliefs define me; they no longer need to be defined for me.”

So much of anarchist outreach focuses on what we see as the ‘easy targets’ – whether it’s market anarchists trying to convert minarchists and libertarians, or social anarchists trying to atttract the edges of the left-leaning progressives of the world; I’d argue that the religious folk of the world are ripe for understanding anarchist ideas.  Whether it’s Catholics that are fed up with the Pope’s stand on gay marriage and contraception or Mormons that wish to be able to grow spiritually without needing the consent or guidance of the LDS Church, I can only imagine how effective our efforts would be if we were to simply say “look at your beliefs, do you truly believe that God would want someone on earth deciding what is right and wrong?”.  The arguments for anarchism are readily built into many religions, and with some gentle prodding can be easily brought to the surface:

For Christians:  “All have sinned and come short of the Glory of God” (Romans 3:23) – wouldn’t it seem logical, then, that if all are sinners equally in the eyes of God, then no one person should be raised up above any other?  No priest, pastor, preacher or minister by this logic has any right to judgement: as the saying goes “only God can judge me”.  Call this the ‘equal humility’ argument.

For Muslims:  “And who is better than Allah to judge for people who are sure?” (Q’uran 5:50) – again, similar to the arguments from Christianity, it is made very clear in the Q’uran that Allah is the only one that truly has the right to lay down law and judgement.  Indeed, Sharia law is a system based purely on the idea that no human legislation is valid, only the law from the Q’uran.  While this can be problematic in and of itself for anarchism, it’s still the concept that no man made laws are valid.  While I don’t claim to be half the scholar of the Q’uran that I am of the Bible (being that I’m coming from a very western paradigm), I’m cautiously optimistic that the Q’uran and Sharia are not at all incompatible with anarchism (commentary from any Muslim readers is VERY welcome on this subject).

What I’d truly like to see are anarchists from within those religions who can speak the same language as their brethren begin to disseminate the idea that it’s common belief that binds them together, not the organization that they happen to be a member of.

After all, as almost every Christian I’ve ever met has told me, it’s Jesus and God, not the Church, that makes them Christians.

At the core, I truly believe that organized religion poses as much of a threat to freedom as does any Statist system, and for one underlying reason: in both cases, one set of people have deemed themselves superior to, and thus having the right to control, another set of people.  In the same way that we recognize that it’s not valid for the State to extrapolate authority over others from the constitution, or some ethereal ‘social contract’, I think that organized religion is ripe for a revolution of it’s own: where people begin to separate their beliefs from the churches, mosques, and temples that would seek power over them.