Religion: Devotional Anarchism

This Topic of the Week is "Devotional Anarchism" which inaugurates the Theme of Three Weeks of "Religion".

Anarchism, like religion, is a word that lumps together a great variety of disparate people, practices and traditions. Though its etymology is disputed - much like anarchy's - many authors claim that the word “religion” comes from the Latin verb religare, which means “to bind”, which some have to interpreted as bringing together the people to worship. Others claim it comes from the Latin verb religere, which means “to recover", which some have to interpreted as "mending their ties with God". Yet one etymological interpretation of "anarchy" means "without priests" as much as it means "without rulers". One can in read in Gelderloos' "Worshiping Power" - discussing various sources, among them, Federici"s "Caliban and the Witch" and Evans' "Witchcraft in the Gay Counterculture"- about the historical role of religion in processes of state formation. How is anarchism bound and recuperated by religion?

Recently I watched the recording of the Jewish Anarchists Panel that was part of the Edinburgh Anarchist Feminist Bookfair. They spoke of a resurgence of a new wave of rejuvenated and queered Jewish Anarchism, as well as the Jewish origins of Anarchism. This discussion promoting the launch of the anthology "There Is Nothing So Whole as a Broken Heart: Mending the World as Jewish Anarchists", as well as another, took place in the context of a heating up of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. During this week, in discussion of this topic in various posts, there was mention of Anarca-Islam and Muslim Anarchism in general in the comments section.

Days later, an article titled Christian Anarchism for Absolute Beginners got posted. Nietzsche insulted anarchists for their brand of secular Christianity, some trace the origins of anarchism to the Anabaptists. "New Age" religions as well as "New Atheism" are also looked at with derision. So are stale subversions of Christian themes turned cliche, like that much memed image from that portion of the Sistine Chapel fresco by Michelangelo, where God is represented as a veiled floating bisection of a human brain.

Should we throw Buddhist Anarchism into the discussion as well? Some would say it's a philosophy, not a religion. What else? The overlap between Anarchy and Daoism, as an article from the recent Resurgence of The Anvil explores?

After binding together all the disparate threads of this implied discussion, entangled like a messy ball of yarn, shall we cut this Gordian knot and leave the spinal cord Acéphale?

How contentious is it to lump all these under the banner of religion, and then lump them in with anarchism as well? How to frame the discussion? With what care and respect, devotion or scorn? How are rich and diverse traditions used to bolster weak arguments? How does philosophy derive metaphysical imperatives from religion? How do autonomous decentralized demagogues spice up their rhetoric with the esoteric? How are these old tricks used to fan the flames of waning interest in anarchism? How is anarchism used to spruce up these old religions?

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Remember when 'no gods, no masters ' meant no gods and no masters? I member.

Religion: The creation of a sick fantasy. Inhabitant of senile and impotent brains. Companion and comforter of rancid spirits born to slavery. A pill for constipated minds. Marxism for the faint of heart.

On the ruins of piety and religion we want to erect the creative hardness of our proud hearts!

My spiritual life is private. My anarchist activities don't require any spiritual justification to be (more) anarchist. You can find antecedents and overlapping ideas and practices among various religious and spiritual traditions -- so what?

it's a bit niche but morbidly fascinating for me, the (usually associated these days with) nihilist urge towards an extreme form of self destruction with a veneer of the political context, as perhaps represented in a secular form here

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/narcissa-black-kcbg-and-annonymo...

and infamously in a pseudo-religious context with ITS and many, many more versions.

All of this stuff, whether it openly rationalizes itself with some form of woo or not, it all has that "zeal" component to it: stop thinking about causality and consequences and throw yourself in to the meat grinder because [insert murky alternative to self preservation here].

Guess my point is the primal scream followed by desperate act of self destruction is something I'll always associate with "religion", be it for "the cause" or "natural law" or "gozer the destructor" or whatever. It's a very human thing, whatever it is and certainly not my favorite part, even though I can always identify strongly with the folks who do it for better reasons, like Van Spronson.

No gods, no masters should mean no more martyrs imo, or at least not overly eager ones.

Nietzsche may be right about the comrades among us. however I’ll never understand the vitriol towards the anarcho-religious

"anarcho-religious" is analogous to "anarcho-capitalist".

the shit just don't fit.

If you make a comparison from Voltaire and Tolstoy, we will see the significance of Nietzsche's criticism.
Voltaire as a member of the Enlightenment, Nietzsche both criticized him and liked him: on the one hand, the quest for otherworldly truth and certainty is nothing but a disease; on the other hand, Nietzsche liked Voltaire's passion.
" Voltaire's enemies, like all those Romantics, from Victor Hugo to the Goncourt brothers, the last of the Romantic divines, showed a devotion to Rousseau, a whiting under the mask that makes me suspect that in the bones of Romanticism existed the resentment of pariahs... Voltaire was a great and witty "scoundrel" (original French: canaille); but I agree with Father Galliani:
‘un monstre gai vaut mieux
qu'un sentimental ennuyeux. ’
-- Nietzsche in Nice, November 24, 1887; to Peter Gast in Venice[MT]"
And Tolstoy brought Christianity back to the Enlightenment, imprinting the process of the light going out. I think it is purely a matter of quality of mind. Upon comparison, we find that the true light is enough to illuminate the musty cellar even if only for a moment.
This is not only due to religion, but points out why the light of enlightenment necessarily go into decay. Why the revolution is going to its own opposite.

Religion is an authority that should be fought. That being said: I don't think we should leave religious people out. I debate against religious beliefs of people I organize with, but still collaborate with them.

You fight their beliefs but think still to collaborate? This is not fight, this is play. Either you play at fight or they play at believe.

Leave all human people out. Especially religious human people. Return to monke.

"Religion" is ultimately an arbitrary moniker for a wide variety of practices, institutions, beliefs, and literary movements that never cohere with each other. To be "for" or "against" religion, on either side, is never to be really for or against "religion." It is more relevant (and ultimately meaningful) to discuss more clear concepts, like theology or prayer or metaphysis, or even magic. Not that any of those fields are "clear" per se but they are more clear than "religion."

Sure, it's easy to say that "religion" (whatever particular specter you pick out of the bag) is a form of control or authority, but this is such a naieve and ironically orthodox Christian point of view that it is comical. Cooping myself up in my closet, with my head between my knees, saying the Jesus prayer for hours to attain an altered state of consciousness is not the same as submitting to feudal church authority. Likewise for zazen or Sufi twirling. The most potent religious acts are always those that point inward, the esoteric, as opposed to the outside, the exoteric. Sure, one could argue that these are not 'religious' acts, but that would be shifting the goalposts unless one agrees that there is no true religious act in the first place.

Lastly I believe it is naieve to hold that anarchism is not, in itself, a sort of religion. keep in mind my critical attitude towards the term.) Political (or anti-political, what have you) notions are, as Carl Schmidt noted, theological. Hell, it's already deeply rooted in our vocabulary -- what is iconoclasm, pray tell? In its original form, a zealotous adherence to the commandment against idols. Modern philosophers love to speak of the Real, the Absolute, Substance, the Unique, et cetera. What they mean, and are too cowardly to admit, is God.

But no, these concepts aren't God.

Yet "God" is also a blurry notion. The word itself is Germanic and was never used in any latin, greek or hebraic languages. It's even farther semantically than the Allah of Muslims, where one can say Allah is a derivative or Al-Yah (The Lord YHVH). But is this some bearded old man in the sky... or the Supreme Light... Or the Eternal... No one can tell exactly.

Would be a current English translation of the original Germanic word "God"?

"Got", "Gudan" are proto-germanic words, and "God" was the Saxon verson. English language is an evolution from the Old Germanic language.

Believe it or not! There's no "God"... in any scriptures outside of English and Proto-German languages. This is just the naturalized name given by King Jame's Bible.

But that's what Nietzsche was saying hundreds of years ago, there's no god.

Nope, John 1 :1 ---In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
You clearly do not know the bible. It admits that God is JUST A WORD. And Nietzsche was questioning that there was no such word, that the word was dead, therefore God was dead.
Same thing,

For many religious people and most "fundamentalists" of the Abrahamic religions. The old bearded (white) man on a giant throne in the sky. This is idolatry.

I use the word "God" freely because I never had religion shoved down my throat as a kid. The word "Buddha Nature" can easily be used instead.

What I mean by this word is the infinite, unimaginable, absolutely selfless source of all life and all "creation" (i.e. the known universe and other universes we do not know). This is from direct experience, not doctrines taught to me by religions.

In my opinion, when fixing your mind on God, you should visualize (preconceive) absolutely nothing.

Where in fact the Western conception of "God", or Greco-Latin Zeus/Dio/Jupiter (Zeus Pater) are entirely from pagan polytheist cults. The notion of an old wise bearded man in.the sky lilely dates back to Marduk if not much earlier. Like with many other things Xian, idol-worshipping and a kind of anthropomorphic polytheism (the Trinity, the cult of the Saints, that has some similarity to hinduism) have made their way back into the maintream over thr centuries. But looking at the teachings of Jesus, there's none of this stuff, and neither a Manichean Good vs Evil (there are only relative "evils", including sickness, misdeeds and hardships).

Jesus was an atheist in a way, as he asserted, in a way not too dissimilar to king Akhenaten and his Sun God, or the later Sol Invictus cult, an entity that is beyond everything but also everywhere, more a Creator entity, from which all life emanates. Or close to Ahura Matsuda or the An of the ancients. Nothing related to "some old guy in the sky", or several people sitting on Olympos. Even beyond Lord Rama ruling the world from Agartha.

But I agree with the "God is our Superego" part, as it's maybe the clearest ontology that we can make of it. Tho even there, with Mesopotamian deities being lawmakers, it's not very original to Xianity.

Right, everyone means god when speaking of anything other than trivia. Damn cowards!

Religion helps people, especially those who work for a living. Anarchists should be careful about alienating themselves even more from the wide mass of humanity who are not them.

especially those who work for a living. anarchists should be careful about which anon they listen to on the internet and in life...

Mr. Should!

Plz attempt to make sense at least, next time you clumsily attempt making anarchists morally indebted to spooks like the "wide mass of humanity", religion, and those that work for a living (which includes many problematic people you likely see as heroes, like cops, construction workers, State school teachers, etc).

But I know... you've likely been mystified by these lofty ideals of massified social change where justice will come if everyone -especially anarchists- unite and conform. Or maybe you're just trolling. Which one, I couldn't care less at this point.

'If God, if mankind, as you affirm, have substance enough in themselves to be all in all to themselves, then I feel that I shall still less lack that, and that I shall have no complaint to make of my "emptiness." I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.' — Saint Max (peace be upon him).

Biggest individualist gets merced by biggest collectivist.

Max was a little bitch.

Srsly wtf. Imagine actually getting killed by a bumblebee.

imagine your knowledge of Stirner coming from a canceled communist LARPer wizard on the internet.

indeed. the bumblebee nonsense was by aforementioned commie memegoist for likes & subscribes & patreon dollars... and to build some stupid commie mythology to appropriate egoism and mash it into some sort of ridiculous maoist memegoist fantasy to get more likes & subscribes & patreon dollars.

e. armand wrote that it was an infection cause by the bite of an anthrax-bearing fly--which is a thing.

check your sources, trolly. and if you're going to troll at least be unique about it and don't just regurgitate commie memes.

I do not mean to offend and provoke reprisals from the mighty noble Stirnerian Knights!

There's a anarcho-islam now? I read a bit of that anarcho-islam article linked and it sounds just as dumb as christian anarchism and jewish anarchism. What's next? anarcho-scientology? After reading some of that anarcho-islam article linked, my mind was blown at the mental gymnastics the author goes through.

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