Visions of an Anarcho-Christian: An Introduction
Culture, meaning, and questioning the usual scripts.
I have spent – or perhaps I should say misspent - my life grappling with the systems that control our lives. I have sometimes resisted them, sometimes acquiesced, sometimes served them as a mere henchman, but there’s always a great deal of questioning and struggling with their implications. William Blake wrote, “I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create”. This blog is a space to explore those struggles and to attempt to communicate the vision that guides me.
I’m not a fan of labels, yet (here comes the inevitable contradiction) I would label myself, if pressed, as anarcho-Christian. As my excuse, my anarcho-Christianity is not an identity, nor an ideology, still less is it a party or a movement. It is a way of seeing, questioning, and positioning one’s living in the world. It involves a rejection of false hierarchies, coercive structures and (to use the old talk) worldly temptations in favour of an allegiance to truth – an allegiance that belongs only to God. I realize that for some readers the word God will be a stumbling block, but this is my blog, and I find the word/concept/whatever God meaningful and practical for conveying something about the origins of who and what we are. Through this blog, I will explore a range of themes: faith, power, culture, theatre and film, spiritual struggle, political illusions, and personal reflections. Some of what I write will critique, but much of it will also imagine. This is not a project of mere rejection, but of vision.
My Journey to Anarcho-Christianity
I was born into a working-class family in Romford – East London, or is it Essex? – raised amongst contradictions from the first. My dad was a practising Christian – a Salvationist; my mum was faintly agnostic but with Jewish heritage. I grew up engrossed in both the sacred and the irreverent – I loved the grandeur of biblical epics at the same time as adoring the coarse humour of British comedy. By my teens, punk had given me a language of rebellion, a way to push back against the structures I saw around me, which somehow seemed to be offering me life-choices which I found profoundly inappropriate. The Clash’s ‘Career Opportunities’ felt like it was sung straight at me – “They offered me the office, offered me the shop…” (Strummer & Jones). The anarchism that punk offered made intuitive sense, but so did my growing unease with purely materialist ways of seeing the world. Rejecting the system came easily, but creating something to replace it is a lot harder.
As a child, I’d adopted my father’s Christian faith, but in my late teens I stepped away from Christianity, finding myself drawn instead to leftist political movements and the provocative works of activist playwrights. But I increasingly felt that these were missing the point. Bob Dylan once said of protest songwriting that, “It's a stagnation kind of thing (...) worse than being a pregnant dog” (Scaduto, 1972). The dogmas of socialism proved just as rigid as the hierarchies they claimed to resist. It was not until I encountered artists like Blake and Dylan – who infused their work with spiritual defiance – that I saw there wasn’t simply a choice between fundamentalist religion and materialist politics. At the same time, a series of experiences, including psychedelic encounters and personal revelations, led me back to faith - not institutionalized, but as the acknowledgement of a reality that transcends all human systems. Therefore, I would call the lens through which I see the world is anarcho-Christian. It was during the writing of my doctorate that I explored Christian anarchism, and I found it to be the closest fit—spiritually, philosophically, and politically—to my own evolving perspective. I have to confess, the old punk in me couldn’t resist the more edgy flipping of the term. You have to call things something…
What Anarcho-Christianity Means to Me
For me, anarcho-Christianity is:
· Not putting faith in the state – Governments at best administer, at worst control and blind. Their promises are mostly illusions, as they are the emissions of false ideologies.
· Being wary of the corporations – They do not sell truth, merely distractions. They commodify identity and turn human beings into market segments.
· Giving no allegiance to ideological tribes – The left and the right are both caught in the same traps, believing power will save them if only they wield it correctly.
· Committing to vision – Faith is not about adhering to dogmas, but about seeing beyond temptations to worldly power, as Christ in the wilderness rejected Satan's blandishments.
· Committing to creativity – Art, writing, and storytelling are acts of creation, which is an ongoing act of revelation.
The World is a Stage
Oh, the hours I had spent inside theatres… but the real fake performances go on around us in “real life.” The world itself is a stage. Theatrum mundi – the idea that life is a performance – is an idea that has been knocking around for centuries. It’s just as true today as it ever was. We are expected to take our assigned roles – identities shaped by politics, commerce, and social expectation. We are expected to perform our assigned selves, to fit neatly into categories designed for ease of control and consumption. Be just individual enough to be comprehensible as an algorithm.
Anarcho-Christianity offers a different kind of play. It does not seek rebellion for rebellion’s sake, nor does it deny the necessity of lawful order. It simply refuses the script where it contradicts conscience and faith. It steps outside the spectacle and seeks the real. It does not ask who you are in the eyes of the audience – the state, the corporations, or the crowd; but rather: who are you in the mind of the creator of the show? What does that creator have in mind for you?
What This Blog Will Explore
This blog will not be political in the conventional sense, nor is it an attempt to convert. My aim here is to explore ideas, to wrestle with contradictions, and to articulate a vision. Topics will include but not be limited to:
· What constitutes integrity within an imperfect world?
· How theatre and storytelling shape consciousness.
· Why modern institutions – state, media, and corporations – do not and cannot provide meaning.
· Reflections on art, history, literature, and mysticism.
· Personal experiences navigating faith, culture, and the struggles of life.
I am writing this not to impose answers, but simply to share a vision – one that others may find illuminating, provocative, or perhaps even troubling.
A Call to See Differently
Why write this now? I got a little time on my hands… And because the world’s illusions are bigger and more pervasive than ever. We are sold identities which trap us in consumer loops. Politics demands allegiance to failing systems. Meaning is outsourced to algorithms. I feel compelled to get this stuff out there, not because I have all or in fact any of the answers, I want to keep some notes on the circuses I see and capture any revelations—not just for myself, but for you, whomever you might be, should you find them of any worth.
If you begin to strip away the illusions the world has sold you about who you are, what might you be left with?
There's a babe in the arms of a woman in a rage
And a longtime golden-haired stripper on stage
And she winds back the clock and she turns back the page
Of a book that nobody can write
Oh, where are you tonight?
(‘Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat’, Bob Dylan, 1978)
For the Curious
William Blake’s line comes from his ‘Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion’, which you can find in Complete Writings (edited by Geoffrey Keynes, 1966) - my go-to for Blake’s wild, visionary words.
The Dylan quote’s from ‘Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)’ on Street-Legal (1978) - a song that’s haunted me since I first heard it.
Anthony Scaduto’s Bob Dylan (1972) was an early peek into Dylan’s world—gritty and real, worth a flip-through.
‘Career Opportunities’ by The Clash (Joe Strummer and Mick Jones) is off their debut album The Clash - pure punk fuel from my teenage years in Romford.
For more on Dylan and Christian anarchism, check out The Political World of Bob Dylan: Freedom and Justice, Power and Sin by Jeff Taylor and Chad Israelson - stumbled on it during my doctorate and it stuck.