This post is part of my Anarchist Bible series - see the introduction and list of posts.

Our world seems so full of evil. Genocides churn without end. Gaping holes score the earth so that resources can be extracted. Refugees make camps home year upon year. Business and political leaders enrich themselves at the expense of generations present and future. The watchful eyes of state and corporation are ever more present.

When evil seems insurmountable, what is our individual role in pursuing a transformed world. Is another world possible?

Jesus’ audiences under the extractive colonization of the Roman Empire would have had many of the same questions. What does it look like to be faithful? When and how is God’s rescue coming?

These crowds expected rescue to come through violent revolt. In fact, they’d tried it multiple times over the centuries. One time a Jewish monarchy was even restored for a few decades, but it quickly experienced total failure, like the several would-be kings had revolted against occupying empires, dying by the same swords they rose in revolution.

The crowds wondered, would Jesus be the one to kick out the Romans and re-establish a Kingdom where things were right?

Among the questioning crowds, Jesus said a new Kingdom was upon them, even now in their midst, likely triggering memories of these past revolutions.

Strangely, instead of taking up weapons, he wielded stories filled with images from daily village and farm life, opening windows into the nature of this Kingdom.

Jesus’ Stories

Take a moment to read this brief series of stories from Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ story. (Parables of the Sower/Soils, Mustard Seed, and Yeast)

As you read, where do you see coercion and freedom? Where do you see hiddenness and revelation? Where do you see gradual and sudden shifts? If these stories were about the Kingdom of Rome, what images might be used instead?

Voluntary Association in the Parable of the Sower

In the parable of the sower, also called the parable of the soils, what determines the outcome for each of the areas in which seed is sown? The sower is the same. The method is the same. The soil the seed reaches differs. In Jesus’ explanation, the variation in soils corresponds to the differing responses of those who hear his good news about the kingdom. Each person responds differently, and only those who freely choose positive response to the kingdom experience its fruit or results. We see that some initially choose to associate themselves and then exit over time for a variety of reasons. Voluntary association with the Kingdom is a foundational element. Jesus’ kingdom does not coerce anyone to participate, and the life of the Kingdom is experienced only by those who choose it.

Similarly, voluntary association is essential to anarchism. Anarchism rejects forced participation in organizations and freely chosen participation is a core building block. Anarchism challenges the legitimacy of the state because it is based upon coercion (ultimately taxes and the force of laws work through the threat of violence or incarceration). In anarchist visions of society, organization and the meeting of one another’s needs happens through entities which people freely choose to associate with, and the freedom to end association with them without threat of coercive retribution is crucial to that being a full reality.

A Mustard Seed, Yeast, and an Anarchist Theory of Change

Communists (particularly of the Leninist variety) envision revolutionary change occurring through the violent takeover of the mechanisms of the state by a small group of leaders representing the workers. They fundamentally don’t change structures of hierarchy and production through mass industrialized extraction of wealth from people’s wage labor, but they redistribute the fruits of the system more broadly than the capitalist system before it.

The expectations among Jesus’ audience of what a Messiah would do were not so different. They expected a rescuer to violently expel the Romans but to rule in place of them, using their same methods both to win power and to exercise it, but wielding that power to the benefit of Israel rather than to Rome. Their dream sounds much like the vision of nationalist authoritarians today, stirring popular sentiment against elites and promising to use power for the people if the unlimited authority of the state is handed over to them.

In all of these visions, change is sudden, violent, and widespread, but the change is really only at the top, changing out one set of oppressive leaders ruling through coercion for another. The realities of domination, hierarchy, and wealth extraction are left unchanged.

In Jesus’ parables, however, we see a different theory of change, one more similar to anarchist visions.

In the images of the mustard seed and the yeast, we see the Kingdom starts small, nearly invisible. It is initially hidden, in the ground or under a bushel, planted in the soil or dough with expectations for the future. Each leads growth, bringing gradual quiet expansion without fanfare or violence. Eventually, what was once invisible fills the whole space as the largest of all garden plants or the leaven throughout the whole loaf. Finally, each gives nurture, a nesting place for the birds and sustenance for the stomach.

The Kingdom Jesus has brought is a way of life initiated in small places, unnoticed people, hidden communities. There, grassroots revolution begins. As with anarchism, Jesus is engaged in “prefigurative” politics. The life of his people, as with anarchist collectives, embodies a vision of another possible world, one in which love rules and we interdependently aid one another (more on that to come!). Change bubbles up as experimental communities model a different kind of life and others are drawn into that vision — not by coercive force but by force of vision. Gradually, quietly, this new way transforms society from within, transforming hearts and culture to undermine domination from below rather than violently switching out oppressors from above.

Jesus had a revolution in mind, but these brief images signal how his route to get there was far different than what his audience desired. Still today, the yeast continues to spread through the loaf, preparing for the day it is fully risen.

A Movement for Ordinary People

Complex jargon or obscure references can be used to reinforce hierarchies and exclude people from having influence on movements. Jesus uses simple language and stories from the lives of the ordinary village folks in his audience. Jesus’ teaching places those who experience oppression at the center and equips them for participation and replication. In this way, he reflects the same opposition to methods that would create hierarchy and domination that is theoretically seen in anarchism. I wonder if some anarchist folks could benefit from his example!

Subverting the State

We see Jesus talking about why he uses parables to teach. It seems that a significant purpose of them is to get his message across to those who are open to it, so that they will respond, without having to fully and openly say exactly what he means as doing so might bring down immediate retribution from the state.

Parables are in continuity with various forms of veiled communication that those in conflict with the state have had to employ over time to avoid state retribution. (More to come on that when we get to the book of Revelation!)

In these passages and throughout the gospel stories, we see Jesus describing what might be called the “un-Kingdom of God”. Yes, it is a kingdom, with God ruling (more on that to come!). The language of rule is used, similar to empires like Rome. However, the values of this kingdom are opposite those of the Empire and undermine it at every turn! This is true even down into the methods Jesus uses. Rather than the direct and conspicuous propaganda of Caesar in statues, coins, banners, and proclamations, Jesus works through these quiet, veiled stories, offering a half-hidden picture of an alternate society to those who would choose it.

Ordinary Anarchism - Pickup Sports

Anarchism is all around us in daily life! People often believe it is a far-fetched idealistic dream that could never work. However, the ways we see its principles working around us help to demonstrate to us that it not only can work, but it is already how we arrange much of our lives!

I live near a soccer field where kids are constantly playing pickup soccer games. Somehow, with no league, no scheduled games, no officials, no coaches, and no parents, these kids have games running every day. There is no descent into violent chaos. How do they do it?

Without an authority determining when and how games are played, they are practicing anarchism. They voluntarily cooperate for a limited time as they come together for a game. By some process of consensus, they agree upon teams, and a consensus process is also at work as the group self-officiates decisions such as who gets the ball when it goes out of bounds or when someone has fouled another player. Is it a perfect system without conflicts? I doubt it. At the same time, it continues to sustain itself, the players enjoy themselves and keep returning, and they are able to play constantly without league fees. They demonstrate daily outside my window that groups can organize themselves towards a shared purpose without law, force, hierarchy, or domination.

I also play pickup basketball and volleyball with friends regularly, and we do the same there, gathering a group, forming teams, and determining rules, fouls, and even the current score by consensus.

Historical Heroes: G. K. Chesterton and Distributism

I'll regularly highlight historical heroes, often in the week of their birth or death. Today is the birth date of G. K. Chesterton.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton of England (29 May 1874-14 June 1936) was a writer and theologian. Though he grew up among Unitarians and the occult, he was drawn to the Anglican and eventually the Roman Catholic Church. He wrote in journalism, fiction, poetry, philosophy, theology, economics, and even song, and he did radio broadcasts as well. Through these, he brought Christian faith, life, and ideas consistently into the public conversation in creative and engaging ways and he maintained lively relationships with skeptics, often dialoguing with them and their ideas in public ways. He helped to develop a system of thought called "distributism" which seeks to express Christian social teaching in economic policy.

Chesterton seems to have been fascinated by anarchism, as anarchists show up in various of his writings, though some of those he writes of were more of the “violent overthrow” variety.

In my opinion, Chesterton’s distributism aligns with many of the values of anarchism. Distributism seeks to spread ownership of the means of production as widely as possible, giving each person autonomy over the inputs, nature, and method of their work as much as possible in pursuit of fulfilling and meaningful labor for all. It opposes the standardized, mechanized monotony of the assembly line and imagines a better future for the worker than industrial communism’s vision of higher wages for monotonous work still directed from above just by the state instead of the CEOs. Certain major figures often considered anarchists are also considered distributists, including Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker Movement and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.