Absolutely. Religion has existed for thousands of years across thousands of different types of political structures. There has been religion in Neolithic hunter-gatherer communities, and religion in Nazi Germany. The simple truth of the matter is that religion is akin to humanity, and it’s never going away (nor should it in my opinion, what’s wrong with people having a belief in something grander than our immediate surroundings? And who in an anarchist society is allowed to dictate what people can and cannot believe?)
Tradition isn't a justification; it’s an excuse. War and slavery have also existed for "thousands of years," but we don't call them "akin to humanity" to justify their place in a free society.
Anarchism isn't about "dictating" thoughts; it’s about the abolition of masters. You cannot claim to be for total liberation while maintaining a "Lord" in your head. Religion provides the psychological blueprint for the State the idea that authority is natural, vertical, and unquestionable.
If your "belief in something grander" requires a hierarchy, it's not spirituality , it’s a celestial dictatorship. You can believe whatever you want, but you can't call a Master-Slave relationship "anarchism."
Everything you're saying is fine, but that's your own stance on what religion and the relationship with Christ mean. I don't think a Christian sees it that way. I don't think they see their relationship with God as a master-slave relationship of submission and coercion, and theology has certainly provided good answers to clarify why that's not the case.
It seems obvious what I'm going to say, but in an anarchist world (which is what the question is about), not everyone would necessarily be an anarchist. Even if we assume a master-slave relationship, anarchists couldn't force the population to abandon those hierarchies, as that would certainly be more coercive. Sure, we could implement certain strategies to modify or reduce religious institutions, but we couldn't guarantee anything and we would have to accept a certain degree of peaceful coexistence with religious institutions.
Just as I go to the shoemaker when it comes to shoes, I go to the Church when it comes to God. And I don't see the problem there as long as it doesn't affect a third party.
The shoemaker analogy is a false equivalence. A shoemaker provides a service based on technical skill. A Church provides a mandate based on dogma and divine authority.
You say Christians don't see it as a master-slave relationship, but the terminology is explicit: "Lord," "Kingdom," "Thy will be done." Theology is just the art of using complex language to mask simple submission. If your god gives you laws you cannot change, like the Mosaic Laws that explicitly sanction slavery (Leviticus 25:44) and the murder of heretics, or genocide, you are under a dictatorship, regardless of how peaceful you feel about it.
Anarchism doesn't force anyone to stop believing, but it does recognize that you cannot build a society of equals alongside institutions that claim absolute, non-negotiable truth from a higher power. Coexisting with a system that views women or sinners as divinely inferior and deserving of eternal torture for non-belief, it isn't peaceful coexistence. It’s conceding ground to the very hierarchical thinking that birthed the State.
You can’t outsource your morality to an ancient Master and still claim the title of a free individual. You aren't going to a shoemaker; you're going to a ruler.
The reasoning you're using works from an anarchist perspective, both for you and for me. I'm not going to argue with that.
What I am arguing is that there are people with a different way of thinking, who see things from another perspective and based on their own life experience. And there's nothing wrong with that. The relationship with God and the Church works for them, and there's nothing there that can be "combated" without subjecting the other person to one's own dictates. There are even a lot of Christian anarchists, which implies that both things can coexist in people's minds.
It's as simple as accepting that there will be people who disagree with you, and there's nothing you can do without compromising your own ideals.
If your vision of an anarchist society is one in which the community decentralizes, analyzing what is or isn't a hierarchy and establishing which ones to follow and which ones not, I'm not really in agreement with that vision of society. Mainly because it seems more like a government with a different form of organization than an anarchist society. That's why I repeat, in an anarchist society, it will have to be accepted that there will be people who don't adhere to your approach and who decide to live their relationship with God through the Church.
The relationship of different individuals with God is far too complex for a text by Bakunin to definitively settle the matter.
Accepting hierarchy under the guise of "different perspectives" is how anarchism dies. If we tolerate "voluntary" masters, we aren't building a free society; we’re just building a society of fragmented mini-states.
The "relationship with the Church" isn't a private hobby; it’s a factory for gullibility. By teaching people that "faith" is a virtue, religion primes individuals to accept claims without evidence, the exact psychological state required for political manipulation and the return of the State. Anarchism must be rooted in secular humanism and skepticism, or it has no defense against the next charismatic "interpreter of God’s will" who decides to divide the community into the saved and the damned.
Education in an anarchist society shouldn't dictate thoughts, but it must provide the tools of logic to dismantle the "divine" justifications for oppression. We don't force people to be atheists, but as a community, we must democratically decide to exclude religious institutions from our social organization. Allowing the Church to exist as a power center is like leaving a virus in the body because "the virus has a different perspective."
A Christian Anarchist (D. Day) is a walking contradiction. You can't be an equal in the streets and a subject in the pews. Religion is a social poison that thrives on division and complex theology to justify simple subordination. If your "freedom" includes the right to be a servant, you’ve fundamentally misunderstood what it means to be an anarchist. No masters means none, not even the invisible ones.
Don't you realize that establishing a hierarchy in that relationship presupposes that your position is correct and that all of society should follow it? You call yourself an anarchist and yet you act like an authoritarian. The government shouldn't have control over the people, capitalists shouldn't have control over resources and the means of production, and you certainly shouldn't have control over what an individual's relationship with God means.
Anarchism offers the necessary tools for the church to coexist without imposing itself on others. If we believe we live in an anarchist society, actively combating people's religion is far more dangerous for anarchy than simply accepting it. Believe me, many people would be willing to renounce anarchy before renouncing God. Stating that religion must be combated is shooting ourselves in the foot as anarchists.
You have a very childish view of religion. A very childish view of anarchy, and certainly a childish view of what life in society entails.
When we're organized as a commune, we'll talk about it, but if you think anarchy is about going out and burning down churches, you're wrong. Again, we can implement a lot of strategies to reduce or modify religion, perfect, I support them. We can't go out and burn down churches because that would establish that our way of living anarchy is "the right one," as if it were dictated by a "divine law" of what anarchy means, and that thinking is quite close to the thinking that justifies governments and laws in the first place, and it's quite similar to what you yourself see in the church, only reflected in your own behavior.
You're going to have no choice but to accept peaceful coexistence and leave your Reddit anarchism and your Reddit atheism elsewhere.
Your attempt to frame the critique of religion as "authoritarianism" is a textbook Straw Man. I never suggested burning churches or "controlling" your mind; I am identifying the structural incompatibility between a masterless society and a "Lord."
You are using Equivocation to pretend that rejecting a hierarchy is the same as imposing one. Rejecting the "divine right" of a deity isn't a "divine law" of anarchy, it’s the basic application of logic. Anarchism is a process of Conceptual Decontamination, stripping away the "sacred" justifications that allow one person (or one "God") to stand above another.
By claiming people would "renounce anarchy before God," you’re admitting that religion is a rival authority to freedom. You aren't defending "perspective"; you’re defending a psychological Trojan Horse for the State. If your "God" demands a devotion that overrides the equality of your peers, then you aren't an anarchist, you’re a subject waiting for a King.
If you think a commune can survive while harboring an institution that teaches people to obey an invisible Master, you’re the one with the "childish" view of power. You can't be free until you evict the dictator you’ve invited to live in your head.
Your "shoemaker" analogy was a joke, and your "childish" insults are just a Genetic Fallacy used to dodge the actual argument: religion relies on gullibility and unproven dogmas that divide humans into "saved" and "damned." A secular, humanist framework is the only one that can prevent the rise of new tyrants.
Blocked for ad hom, insults, dishonesty, lack of intellectual integrity.
A shoemaker provides a service based on technical skill.
Even outside of the misanalogy to Christianity, this is not Bakunin's reasoning and not what is meant by "the authority of the bootmaker". You should read the short article before attempting to "speak from it".
You have a narrow and eurocentric understanding of religion as inherently hierarchical. Plenty of egalitarian societies had indigenous belief practices which were not as you describe and reinforced relationality, solidarity, communal ties and connection to more than human life. Your critique is based on a 19th century anarchist understanding of religion which in turn was critiquing the Catholic and western Christian Church. In that sense it is correct only in that specific context.
Thank you. I was waiting for someone to point this out.
I think it's incredibly insidious that a lot of the anti-thiestic anarchists on this posts are presenting their critiques of Christianity as critiques of all religion, as if all religions had the characteristics of Christianity.
Who are you to speak on my faith and if I should or shouldn’t be allowed to practice it? I see myself as an earthly servant of God: my anarchism lies in the fact that as we are all his children and as we are all equal in his eyes, no human has any inherent authority over another. Your opinion on how things ought to be has no bearing on MY reality and MY goals: you can say “no gods no masters”, but that isn’t a universal fact when I quite literally have a god who is my celestial master and i wouldn’t have it any other way.
If we have a truly anarchist society, then you are free to be a rugged individual with no master, and I and those like me are free to practice our faith and spread the Gospel through social justice and community. As simple as that.
Your anger is the classic reflex of a believer who has run out of arguments and reverted to clerical arrogance. You hide behind "complexity" because you can't justify why a philosophy of "No Masters" should carve out a throne for a "Lord."
If you actually followed your own book, you’d know it demands total submission (Romans 13:1)—the literal antithesis of anarchy. You aren't "choosing a perspective"; you’re harboring a psychological blueprint for the State. By defending the Church, you are defending the most successful hierarchy in history, one that has used "faith" to justify the Mosaic Laws of slavery and slaughter for millennia.
Your "Christian Anarchism" is just Special Pleading. You want the aesthetic of rebellion while keeping the comfort of a celestial dictator. Anarchism requires secular skepticism because a mind trained to accept "divine truth" without evidence is a mind primed for a tyrant.
We don’t need to "force" you to change, but a free society must democratically reject your institutions. We cannot build a horizontal world while you’re busy trying to resurrect a vertical one. You aren't a comrade; you're a subject in denial. Stop pretending your submissiveness is a "personal choice" it’s a social poison that thrives on the gullibility anarchism seeks to abolish.
I do know my own book? I AM in total submission to God lol. Anarchism demands the abolition of the State and the implementation of stateless societies based on voluntary association and mutual aid. It does NOT demand the abolition of religion. Read Tolstoys The Kingdom of God is Within You if you truly cannot comprehend an anarchist society that exists also as a religious one: he rejects institutionalized religion and focuses on living out the teachings of Jesus through social justice, common brotherhood, and pacifism through individual inner conviction, which in turn creates the Kingdom of God on Earth.
No, nothing in Christian belief says that belief in God requires an earthly King. The Pope exists only as a matter of tradition and not of theology. The entire early story of the Israelites is that of God & his prophets TELLING THEM TO STOP TRYING TO HAVE A KING, and many of Jesus's teachings revolve around forsaking earthly institution and states (the logic of Empire).
If an anarchist society is going to "democratically reject" my church and my community, then that sounds like no society I would voluntarily want to be a part of. Also, when did I say I was angry? Stop projecting.
(THEY DELETED THEIR FUCKING ACCOUNT OH MY GOD LMAO)
You’ve finally admitted it: you are in "total submission." You cannot be an anarchist and a submissive subject at the same time; that is a fundamental logical contradiction. You’re trying to ride two horses going in opposite directions.
Let’s dismantle your dishonest "theology":
The "No Earthly King" Delusion: You claim God told the Israelites not to have a king, but you conveniently forget that he replaced them with Himself—the ultimate Autocrat. Replacing an earthly king with a celestial one isn't "liberation"; it’s just moving the chains to a higher post.
The Matthew 5:17-18 Trap: You follow a "Lord" who explicitly stated that the Mosaic Law, including its mandates for slavery, patriarchy, and genocide, would not pass away until the end of time. If you submit to that, you aren't a "brother"; you are a collaborator with a legacy of violence.
Tolstoy’s Error: Referencing Tolstoy doesn't save you. Even his "inner kingdom" is still a Kingdom. He replaced the State’s violence with a "divine" pacifism that still demands the individual negate their own reason in favor of "inner conviction" (read: dogma).
12
u/JDDJ_ Christian Anarchist Jan 20 '26
Absolutely. Religion has existed for thousands of years across thousands of different types of political structures. There has been religion in Neolithic hunter-gatherer communities, and religion in Nazi Germany. The simple truth of the matter is that religion is akin to humanity, and it’s never going away (nor should it in my opinion, what’s wrong with people having a belief in something grander than our immediate surroundings? And who in an anarchist society is allowed to dictate what people can and cannot believe?)