Anarchy and Christianity
A deep dive into one of Ellul's shorter works. Its a book with a promising title that quickly disappoints. Let's dive in a find out why.
As soon as I saw the title of this work among the list of Jacque Ellul’s books, I knew it would be a “must read.” I had mentioned before in a podcast that it seemed like Ellul’s “solution” to the current political situation pointed towards something like anarchism, but what shape would it take? This book has its moments of insight, but it’s also undermined by an inability, I think, to escape the politics of his time and a philosophical commitment to Existentialism. In the end, Ellul still seems to believe in liberalism broadly conceived. He is also an immanentist and a psychologizer of spiritual realities, making him sound at times eerily like Jordan Peterson, and not in a good way.
When I think of anarchy, this is what comes to mind:
I am old enough that I could still shock my parents by acquiring, bringing home and playing the Sex Pistol’s “Never Mind the Bollocks” album. This is not really what Ellul has in mind as he lays out the case for Christian anarchy.
“Christians, however, if they act properly and are not wicked, do not need to obey the political authorities but should organize themselves in autonomous communities on the margins of society and government.”
As someone committed to the idea of building parallel polities in response to the current managerial state regime, I do resonate in part with what Ellul is getting at here.
Elsewhere, in his books “Violence” and “The Political Illusion” he argues that all states are founded and maintained by violence. It is a necessary function of politics. Whether you mask that violence and pretend it isn’t happening, as we often do in the west, believing that our society is founded around discourse —the marketplace of ideas— and negotiation —the social contract— we tend to look away from the many ways in which violence is central to the western regime. Ellul draws a sharp contrast between the world of “necessity,” which includes the political, and the world of grace in Christ. The world of necessity is the world of sin and evil. The world of Christ is that of redemption and love. The Christian commitment is a radical choice for love over violence.
“By anarchy I first mean an absolute rejection of violence.”
This sharp divide, while easy to draw in theory, is challenging to work out in practice. Ellul, across a number of his works, develops the idea of “necessity.” A sinful world forces upon us actions which we know are not good, just, righteous, or loving. The world of God’s grace in Christ, the world of radical love and non-violence is the world which Christians are striving to live in and realize. But because we still live in a world where sin and evil abound, sometimes choices are forced upon us, not between good and evil, but between the lesser and the greater evil. Ellul goes this route so as to avoid trying justify political actions, especially those which are violent, as good. Ellul wants us to acknowledge to ourselves that we do evil. The evils were “necessary,” but still evils. The world that we experience today is not the world God intended, nor is it the world of grace and love that is to come. In this in between time, hard things must be done, “necessary” things.
Ellul then outlines three broad situations in which violence is necessary and explicable:
Taking action to systematically kill those who are in power such that it makes people so afraid of public office with the goal that the state will collapse. Ellul is skeptical that such a condition can be reached, as the state has remarkable organizing power to counter and neuter these kinds of threats. Ellul considers the technocratic managerial state as THE enemy. So an argument can be made that the killing of public officials so as to make governance impossible, is the lesser evil when compared to allowing the administrative state to continue.
When the system creates such increasing conformity, that the administration is so powerful or the economic system seems so invincible (who can arrest multi-national corporations) that violence against the system becomes a cry of despair and the outpouring of a hatred of oppression.
Violence may be necessary as a symbol and a sign to people of the fragility of society, a way to expose and neuter the secret, behind the scenes forces which are at work to undermine it. Violence becomes a form of revelation, a prophetic accusation calling out into the light those who undermine society for their own gain so as to hold them to account for their actions.
This said, Ellul then rejects the necessity of violence as a tool for the Christian community living on the margins of society for two reasons:
He has a belief in the power of non-violent political action, citing Ghandi and Martin Luther King as his examples.
For me this fell somewhat flat, as many of these so-called non-violent political movements have been shown in historical light not to be as pristine as they might seem. Also, non-violent political action, in my mind, still carries with it an implicit threat of violence.
Christianity is the way of love and not of violence.
At heart, argues Ellul, if we look to the actions of Jesus, his self-emptying, his death on the cross, we must come to the conclusion that:
“Christianity means a rejection of power and a fight against it.”
Ellul sees power, technological power, political power, as inherently corrupting. It is like Tolkien’s ring of power. You cannot wield power for good. You must empty yourself of power as a Christian.
“We must never forget to what degree the holding of political power corrupts.”
Christians must draw a hard, absolute line between themselves and the political, he argues:
“The political game can produce important changes in our society and we must radically refuse to take part in it.”
It is a sentiment that many Anabaptists would welcome. Christians have no business getting involved in the political. Ellul would argue that Christians should lend no justification to the legitimacy of the political system, including the process of voting and casting ballots.
“To vote is to take part in the organization of the false democracy that has been forcefully set up by the middle class. No matter if one votes left of right, the situation is the same.”
Ellul is serious about his rejection of the state. You should reject capitalism and all it entails. The imperial aspirations of states should be rejected. Christians should, by no means, engage in military service. Christians should not pay taxes. Nor should they allow themselves to be vaccinated (he mentions this specifically). Nor should any Christian allow their children to be educated in compulsory state run schools. Parent run schools and the organization of tax revolts should be a key part of living as a Christian community on the margins of society.
Once you have read extensively in Ellul, one thing you discover quickly is that he is a realist who does not shy away from accepting hard truths:
“The true anarchist thinks that an anarchist society—with no state, no organization, no hierarchy, and no authorities is possible, livable and practicable. But I do not. In other words, I believe in the anarchist fight, the struggle for an anarchist society, is essential, but I also think that realizing such a society is impossible.”
True anarchism rests on the twin notions that people are good and that society alone is corrupt. In this regard, mainstream anarchy is firmly in the camp of Enlightenment Liberalism. But it is part of the stream that argues against social engineering, leaning instead on the idea that if we just strip away all the instruments of state power that people’s natural goodness will emerge.
In contrast, Ellul argues that people are not good. And while he asserts that the concept of “sin” is an in-house Christian idea, whose reality emerges only once you have embraced the Christian faith, he does say that it is quite obvious that people are covetous and desire power. Here he leans on Rene Girard:
“No society is possible among people who compete for power or who covet and find themselves coveting the same thing.”
As I got deeper into this book, I kept wondering why “anarchy” specifically? I suspect in part it has to do with the time in which Ellul did most of his productive writing, the period following World War 2. There seems to be a fundamental commitment to a basic set of liberal values, like liberty, for example. His theology and reading of the Bible reflects an alignment with European higher criticism and a general “demythologizing” of scripture, as we will see later in this work. I get the sense that he is struggling to find the best political category or label that will allow him to express his fundamental political commitments that today we would call “good liberalism.” That said, there are threads in this book which really resonate with me, like this:
“What seems to me to be just and possible is the creation of new institutions from the grass roots level.”
This is the “build something” option, a parallel polity.
“I have no faith in a pure anarchist society, but I do believe in the possibility of creating a new social model…the only thing we have now is to begin afresh.”
Ellul saw all the same things we see today, only they are more obvious now than they were then.
“The matter is all the more urgent because all our political forms are exhausted and practically non existent…nothing is left. And this nothing is increasingly aggressive, totalitarian and omnipresent.”
The main culprit for the current situation is, in his mind, not unexpectedly, the result of the technological society.
“This is the result of techniques. We cannot speak of a technocracy, for the technicians are not formally in charge. Nevertheless, all the power of government derives from techniques, and behind the scenes technicians provide the inspiration and make things possible.”
I agree with this whole heartedly. But if this is the case, why the need to call yourself an anarchist? I think for Ellul it is more of a posture, a felt relationship to the state-as-enemy.
“I regard anarchy as the only serious challenge, as the only means of achieving awareness, as the first active step…this is why I adopt it.”
To me this is disappointing. The book really goes down hill from here, in large part because of how Ellul understands the nature of Christian faith. The word “anarchy” coming from the Greek literally means “without a ruler.” Many libertarians would vibe with this. Ellul, in my mind, does not sufficiently deal with the realities of building an ordered community, an ordered society, in a sinful world.
I follow Augustine in arguing that sin and evil do not have an existence in and of themselves. They are not a thing. Sin and evil are a corruption of the good. In that regard, evil is the path of chaos, death, disorder and destruction, always twisting and corrupting what is good. The move of redemption is the “work” of uncorrupting the good. While it is a grace, this kind of reordering and redemption of the good from evil requires an intentionality. One must be purposeful about it. Any redemptive community must exercise the same intentionality. At the level of the community it means leadership, organization and, yes, the exercise of power. Ellul wishes to deny this to the community of believers in part because of a number of his theological commitments are rooted in existentialism.
Ellul’s existentialism really shows itself as he attempts to make the biblical case for anarchy. He begins by distinguishing between Christianity and Christendom, as well as between Christianity as a religion and the Christian faith as witnessed in and through the Bible. Ellul begins his defense of Christian anarchy by defending the possibility of anarchy being Christian from anarchists who would say the idea is impossible. From a historical perspective, Ellul agrees with the anarchist critics of Christianity that organized religions generate wars and conflicts that are much worse than the wars started by rulers for non-religious reasons. Within the camp of religious wars, Ellul lumps ideology as well. Any time a conflict is driven by truth and ideas, the enemy becomes the embodiment of evil and so must be eliminated. All religious and ideological wars are holy wars of extermination. The “wicked” must be purged.
Ellul then draws a contrast between the pure faith of Jesus and the religion that was formed out of that pure faith. Ellul makes the argument that pure faith does not lead to war, but once that faith is institutionalized, this is when it becomes a vehicle for conflict.
"All religion leads to war, but the Word of God is not a religion, and the most serious of all betrayers is to have made it into a religion.”
This is a fundamentally existentialist understanding of the Christian faith. You can see the influences of Kierkegaard, Bultmann and Heidegger here. Your faith must be a living thing on the horizon of time. Once it is instantiated and given shape, it ceases to be a living thing. Operative here is the conflict between Plato and Heidegger and the Heideggerian turn in being. Is being something “static,” a given, a ground for reality, a metaphysical hierarchy, something into which we fit and adapt ourselves; or is being something that we create by throwing ourselves authentically onto the horizon of time? This contrast that Ellul draws embraces the latter understanding of being. Anything which is actively asserting itself onto the horizon of time is alive and good. Anything which embraces static structures and hierarchies is bad. Religion is static and therefore bad. Faith is alive and therefore good. It is commitments to this metaphysical hierarchy in the name of religion that leads to war.
Ellul then makes an assertion that I can agree with, but for reasons different from his. He argues that Truth is a person: Jesus. It is not a religion or a set of theological commitments. I would make this argument, that Truth is the person of Jesus, because it exposes the limits of rationality. Ellul makes it because he wants to challenge the legitimacy of the institutional church and with it official church dogma as the embodiment of Truth.
Ellul then picks up critiques we often see coming from liberals, that the Christian church has a long history of imposing the faith upon society through violence or the Inquisition. Frankly, it was disappointing to read Ellul’s wholesale and uncritical embrace of these critiques with little or no nuance. But he is battling a two-fold front. One is “the state” and the other is “the church.” He sees both as having a long history of colluding together to impose Christianity through violence. Ellul argues that any time Christianity has a prominent role in society, it will lend its support to the state.
This is an anachronistic understanding of the relationship between church and the crown. As the Roman Empire began to weaken, there were many situations in which the church picked up the responsibility of civic order, not out of a desire to dominate, but rather in a desire to prevent society from sliding into chaos. Throughout the middle ages, however imperfectly it was managed, the crown and the church worked together to foster a well functioning Christian society. The thing that we now know as “the state” really did not start to come into existence until the end of the high middle ages. Ellul should know better, and I suspect he does know better, but he is committed to his Existentialist understanding of the Christian faith, leading him to this conclusion:
“Anarchists are right to challenge this kind of Christianity, these practices of the church, which constitute an intolerable form of power in the name of religion. In these circumstances religion and power being confused, they are right to reject religion.”
It was a different era, for sure, one in which Christianity was still largely viewed in a positive light. Critiques like this were meant to be seen as helpful and purifying. In today’s negative world where Christianity is as seen a force of prejudice and bigotry, they do the work of the church’s enemies for them. This does not mean we should not critique ourselves. But to do so in a way that validates the enemy’s frame is doing their work for them. Ellul knows that it is impossible for the church to be a body and be organized as a community and not wield power in some form or another. It should not be a question of whether or not we use power, but how and in what manner?
Ellul’s assertion that anarchy is an ideal that cannot be realized offers no practical advice on how to do so in a world of “necessity.” It is an absolute ideal, an either/or which insists on trying to achieve the impossible, the complete divestment of all power. In this regard, Ellul holds out the promise of building alternative communities on the margins, but does nothing to help us achieve that goal, because doing so means exercising power at some level and in some form. It seems incumbent upon us to struggle with those realities such that we can mitigate the ills that do accompany the use of power. And since technique is embraced because of its ability to harness and direct power at scale, what are the alternatives? Ellul offers no help here.
Ellul continues to address the critiques of the anarchists, addressing the metaphysical problems. First is “no God, no master.” The true anarchist is an atheist who rejects the idea of God, especially the idea of God as King. Ellul rejects this idea himself as mistaken and unbiblical. Instead, he argues that the more decisive characteristic of God is that of his love. God is love. He makes the argument that God does not dominate as kings do, rather he is always in a discursive relationship with the creation. After all, he speaks it into being. God is communicative. God does not want to be our master, rather he desires to be in a loving relationship with us. Ellul can assert this all he wishes, but it really does strain the witness of scripture to the point of credulity. The Bible is layered and complex. The kingship of God. The righteousness of God. The justice of God. The mercy of God. The love of God. The faithfulness of God. The holiness of God. All of these characteristics and attributes have to be held together in tension. This is the great mystery of the doctrine of the simplicity of God, that his attributes are coterminous with his essence.
Ellul then addresses the next theological critique of the anarchists, that of providence and foreknowledge. He simply argues that categories like this are merely Greek philosophical categories imposed upon theology. This really does not do justice to a whole category of texts which discuss these very issues. Leaning on Exodus 3, he argues that God remains essentially unknowable: “I will be whom I will be.” The divine attributes of God come from human reason, he argues. It comes from our desire to make God useful. If he controls things and knows things in advance, it raises the question whether or not he can control things for us. Ellul arrives at the position of the unknowability of God, not by means of traditional categories of the essence and energy of God, but rather from his commitment to Existentialism.
“The essential thing, however, is to understand that there is no objective knowledge of God.”
This is very loaded quote. But rather that push towards a nuanced understanding of knowledge and truth, Ellul pushes us in the other direction, to radical subjectivity.
“I cannot objectively proclaim (especially in the case of others) that one thing is a divine gift and another a divine chastisement. This is a matter of faith and thus subjective. … But why should what is subjective be an illusion?”
Once you dismiss the idea of a static metaphysical hierarchy, anything that might carry with it the stench of Plato or give room for someone to find something to appreciate in Plato, it is rejected. His is a commitment to Existentialist theology.
“He is a free God. As Kierkegaard says, he is supremely the Unconditioned. He cannot sit on top of a pyramid of causes.”
To make this case, Ellul gives a reading of the days of creation as a period where God is talking the creation into existence at which point he then “rests” and does not “speak” again until he does so in his Word, that is Jesus. Additionally, he asserts that the creation story is not the decisive and determinative story for the Christian faith. The exodus from Egypt is the key to understanding the action of God. God is not primarily the Creator, rather he is the Liberator. God is the god of freedom. Freedom is love. Love cannot be forced. It must be freely given. In Jesus all commands are addressed to individuals and do not have general applicability.
From here, Ellul addressed the atheist anarchist critique that God cannot be both good and omnipotent. Ellul correctly argues that the fault of evil lies with humanity and cannot be foisted off onto God, but to make the argument fully, he goes the extra step and argues that Satan is not really a supernatural being who tempted humanity. Rather, he psychologizes the role of the devil and demons and labels it, sounding eerily like Jordan B. Peterson, as that which divides, that which drives the world to destruction, that which deceives. Satan gains the name of “accuser” because:
“Satan is that which causes people to bring accusations against one another.”
Instead of evil beings, we have evil forces at work in the world. But because we as human beings are very much a part of creation and tried to seize autonomy and go our own way, nothing within creation is left untouched. At the same time there is no return to chaos. But because there is gap between creation and God —remember, he is fighting the Platonic idea that there is a chain of causality, a hierarchy of being, with God at the top— we understand that God speaks and remains apart from creation, but the order he spoke into being remains.
“God does not intervene incessantly. He does not stop the functioning of natural laws because we are there, we who have broken with him.”
God does still occasionally act within creation.
“A miracle is not a marvel. It is also very rare and exceptional.”
My own thinking on this theologically is likely not the common understanding in western Christianity. I am of the mind that the idea of “natural law” is an extra-biblical idea. My belief, my reading of the scriptures, is that God is intimately involved in the whole creation. These things that we understand as “laws of nature” are in fact God’s active presence and working in creation. If you are carrying something in your hand and you let go of it, and it moves to the ground, that is the work of God, active moment-by-moment in the entirety of creation. Moment-by-moment you can observe with scientific instruments and mathematical precision the faithfulness of God. In my mind this active presence of God, what we would call the energies of God, resolve this conundrum between the notion of a hierarchy of being and the unfolding of being on the horizon of time. Both are resolved in the being and energy of God. He maintains the hierarchical orders of creation, moment-by-moment on the horizon of time.
From here, Ellul moves on to try to demonstrate that the Bible itself teaches the anarchist position. He summarizes his position in the opening of the section:
“A better understanding [of the Bible], I believe, will point us towards anarchy; not in the common sense of disorder, but in the sense of an-arche: no authority, no domination.”
To make his argument, he leans into emphasizing that:
“We in the west are convinced that order can be established in society only by a strong central power or force (police, army, propaganda). To challenge this power means disorder.”
To make his case, Ellul argues that in the Bible, from the outset, that kingship is seen as a rejection of God’s kingship. He argues that the long line of kings are not presented in a favorable light. This is especially true of the good kings who are always marked as flawed in some ways, with David as the chief example of this. For every king there is a critic of the king, a prophet who is there to challenge the power of the king and call them to account, to bring God’s word of criticism against them. None of the prophets were integrated into power. There were court prophets, but in the battle between them and the prophets of God, the one’s from the Lord are always victorious because their words are true. He sees the role of the prophet as the decisive judgement against the kings and kingship as a means of imposing social order and cohesion.
I found this reading somewhat disingenuous, because it painted the picture of Israel as a happy society of anarchists, a collection of individuals, who messed things up by wanting to imitate the nations. This seems a very anachronistic reading of the social arrangements of the time. We would expect that within a tribal setting very clear hierarchies would be maintained by family and chieftains. There would have been fairly strict social control on the society. To say that there was no king, did not mean that order was not being enforced, that there were no authorities and that people were not having to submit to anyone. There is always someone in charge. Someone is always making and enforcing the rules. There are always social hierarchies. To gloss over that point in an effort to discredit the idea of kingship does a disservice to the power of communities. As I have written myself, one of the reasons that people in the US were tempted to abandon community in favor of moral autonomy, is that communities, while lacking kings, can often exert suffocating control. Without someone making the rules, a reality that we very much live today, social order begins to break down. If it isn’t being imposed by communities, it will eventually need to be imposed by the state. For Ellul to make the argument that small communities on the fringes of society will be places of anarchist freedom, is to ignore how communities actually work in practice, ensuring that they will be a disaster. There is no way to build parallel communities without the use of power in some form.
Turning next to Jesus, Ellul picks up a few key moments in his ministry. The first is the temptation of Jesus in the desert. Here Ellul argues that Satan’s offer to him of all the kingdoms of the earth is the acknowledgement that all political authority belongs to the devil. This is a simplistic reading and one that runs counter to the witness of other passages. Ellul takes Jesus’ answer to the devil as kind of Christian anarchist manifesto. “You shall worship the Lord your God and you shall serve him, only him.”
Next episode is the question of paying taxes. Ellul argues that Jesus’ response or “render unto Caesar what is Caesars” skillfully sidesteps the question. He does not allow himself to get drawn into questions of the legitimacy of Caesar’s rule or not, his right to taxation or not. The implication, argues Ellul, is that whatever does not belong to Caesar, belongs to God.
This is followed up by the request of James and John by their mother that her sons would sit at the right and left had of Jesus. Ellul argues that Jesus’ response, that the rulers of nations lord their power over others and that this is not how we are to conduct ourselves, is a recognition by Jesus that all political power corrupts, and there can be be no political power without tyranny. There is no such thing as good political power. It always corrupts. Ellul here takes a moment to reiterate his core vision:
“Set up a marginal society which will not be interested in such things, in which there will be no power, authority or hierarchy. … Create another society on another foundation.”
While I can agree that in the face of the technocratic administrative state in its multitude of forms in government, business, NGOs, and non-profits rightly leads us to the conclusion that the path forward is a parallel polity, to make the case that this same society will have no power, authority or hierarchy is an idealistic fantasy. It operates in defiance of other observations made by Ellul elsewhere, his book on violence for instance. In talking about the Mennonite communities specifically, he argues that their non-violence is sham. Their ability to live in non-violent peace is a luxury secured for them by the order created and enforced by the violence of the larger society. It would be the same for Ellul’s small Christian anarchist communities. In order for them to survive at the margins of society, there has to be a society with margins. That society is founded and maintained by violence. Ellul falls into the same moral posture of others trying to take the political high road in a sinful world.
He continues on to Jesus’ trial before the chief priests and Pilate, emphasizing his general silence as a rejection of the legitimacy of the courts. In regards to the priests, Ellul focuses in on this passage, Luke 22:53, as Jesus’ indictment of their authority:
“Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour—when darkness reigns.”
He argues that with this, Jesus is declaring that the chief priests are under the sway a demonic power.
Ellul argues that one of the central points of the book of Revelation —Ellul did write a full volume on this book of the Bible— is that it is a challenge to political power. Babylon, the great harlot, is a symbolic representation of all forms of political power. In his treatment of the injunction in 1 Peter 2:13-14, Ellul just glosses over the statement that authorities like the emperor or governors are sent by God to punish those who do wrong, mutating it in to a bland injunction to honor the king, more or less ignoring the implication that authorities are put there by God to wield violence as a form of power to punish the wrong doer. Ellul’s commitment to universal salvation prevents him from associating this with the judgement of God, the full fulfillment of which comes on the Day of Judgement.
Things really go off the rails in Ellul’s argument when he comes to the point of having to deal with Romans 13, which is a very explicit and plain explanation that God has established and put the governing authorities into their positions. The opening verses of the chapter:
“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.”
This seems to undercut much of Ellul’s argument throughout the book in regard to his claim that the Bible proclaims the illegitimacy of power and authority. So what does he do with it? His entire argument is to make the case that this chapter is an interpolation and does not belong in the book of Romans. What do we do with passages that make us uncomfortable or don’t fit what we think the Bible should say? Cut them out and label them as later additions. At this point Ellul is no longer making his case from the Bible. If a text clearly contradicts everything I have been saying to this point and rather than reconsidering my argument, I cut out the text and label it as not part of the Bible, it really undercuts my argument. This is what Ellul is doing. And it pretty much blows up the whole of his argument in regards to power. Not that it corrupts, because it does. But that there is no legitimate argument for a Christian to wield power.
One question that Ellul never really faces is what happens if your separate Christian community on the fringes of society is wildly successful and grows or spawns imitations such that a society is majoritarian Christian? What if you are king or magistrate who, once in office, comes to faith in Christ? Is it possible for a Christian to have a God given calling to politics? Does the majoritarian Christian society hand over governance to unbelievers who are the minority? Does sin stop being a thing if society is majoritarian Christian? Of course not. So there is a need for someone in a sinful world to wield power. Christians need to think about this and what it means. We need to work through the questions, difficult questions, about power and how best that can the Christian understand and grapple with its very real, corrupting influence.
In his conclusion we get a sense of Ellul’s struggle and why he went the route of anarchy. He rejected the Medieval idea that kings are placed there by God and that the church can work together with the magistrate for the good of society. All hierarchies are bad in Ellul’s mind. He also rejects Marxism and Stalinism. But he cannot bring himself to becomes conservative:
“Christians can hardly be of the right, the actual right, what we have seen the right become. … The right has now become the gross triumph of hypercapitalism or Fascism.”
Again, he is a product of his time. All people of the right are pretty much Fascists or wannabe Fascists. So, having rejected both the conventional political positions of right or left and having rejected all forms of power as evil, Ellul looks around the political landscape and comes to this conclusion:
“Anarchism can teach Christian thinkers to see the realities of our societies from a different standpoint than the dominant one of the state.”
I find it amusing that I have read enough of Ellul such that this position is not surprising, yet at the same time I came to the position that if one is to build a parallel society to the current one, it will be necessary to deal with the realities of establishing a separate community not dependent upon the rewards of the administrative state, both financial and protective. That means the very real possibility and necessity of violence as well a grappling with the exigencies of power, including its ability to corrupt. I do find myself agreeing with one of his concluding remarks:
“What seems to be one of the disasters of our time is that we all appear to agree that the nation-state is the norm.”
We do need to start thinking outside the frame of “the nation” and “nationalism.” I agree that Christians do need to be building separate communities with a new foundation, different from that of the administrative state —or for that matter the nation-state in general. Where I part with Ellul is with the idea that anarchism is the political philosophy which should inform the formation of separate parallel polities. We will learn what we can from Ellul, but will likely have to chart our own path forward, working out these issues as we build these communities the old fashioned way, through trial and error as opposed to imposing an ideology.