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TOTW: Gotta Have Faith

This is the second in a series of topics on religion - in this case, anarchism as faith and the similarities it can share with religious experience.

"Even if He had been silent, my life up to this point has spoken of Him"
- Father Sebastiao Rodrigues

"Gotta have faith"
- Fred Durst

In the novel Silence by Endou Shuusaku, a notorious magistrate tasked with hunting down hidden Christians and missionaries in Japan during the inquisition there explains he's not putting much effort into the task because, despite many Christians remaining in Japan, the faith of these Christians is being contorted and weakened by their isolation. Unable to practice publicly, cut off from the world outside of Japan and forced to make regular public denials of their faith, he claims their faith is being twisted and distorted into something unrecognizable. While some refuse to yield and suffer horrific tortures and deaths, most ultimately compromise with the oppression they're facing and choose survival.

Ultimately Endou doesn't side with the magistrate - his protagonist comes to understand that, despite living in a world hostile to his beliefs where his ideals fail and he can't bring himself to become a martyr and so ultimately apostatizes, the experience of weakness or oppression is not the death of faith.

How can we apply all this to faith in the beautiful idea? Ultimately we're not a community of heroic martyrs but compromising survivors. How do you keep faith in a hostile world that turns us into hypocrites and liars with every job interview and rent payment? Do these compromises shape your politics? How much does the experience of suffering and loss inform your politics? How do anarchists understand weakness?

How do you keep the faith?