Are there Any Anarchist Churches?

People have often asked us if there are any “anarchist churches” for the curious to visit or to attend or to join. After some consideration, these thoughts seem to address the question:

We are under the impression that whenever someone inquires for an “anarchist church”, they are asking if there is a denomination or if there is some corporate building with pews and a pulpit and a baptistry and an offering plate where, once a week, they sing hymns that may or may not be about anarchy and listen to sermons that may or may not be about anarchy, and just generally all self-identify philosophically as anarchists, but do not really seek the Kingdom or love their neighbor or live in salty and bright obedience to God and perform Christ’s social and political ordinances. This is the reality of the vast majority of institutions that proudly call themselves churches. They are taking the Lord’s name in vain, by claiming to belong to him while actively doing the will of the enemy by perverting the truths of Scripture into an amalgam of palatable falsehoods that have created an innocuous, liturgical social club. When most people think of the word church, they are imagining whitewashed catacombs on just about every street corner in America.

What passes for christianity these days (and centuries past) is just as lost as what it, itself, calls “the lost”. Most of those who think they have “arrived” at the destination of Christianity are asleep and dreaming on the wrong train, headed in the opposite direction.

For instance, when one outsources their responsibility to the first greatest commandment to some sophist clergyman, their heart grows cold towards God. It does not matter if they associate with people who love the Lord their God with their “pastoral” profession and with the “tithes” of the people. The pursuit of “loving the Lord your God, with all of your heart, soul, and mind” is best exercised in your daily life, at home, as a family, learning about the deep things of God by his Spirit and word, rather than in a compartmentalized, weekly, anaerobic routine.

When one outsources their responsibility to the second greatest commandment to some parachurch ministry, their heart grows cold to their neighbor. It does not matter if they associate with people who love their neighbor as they love their comfortable niche “ministry”. The pursuit of “loving your neighbor as yourself” is best exercised in a network of mutually accountable congregations, as a network of charity and adhocracy, rather than in a compartmentalized, bureaucratic, set of peripheral programs.

It is easy to associate oneself with the collective by deferring to the bureaucracy of “collective responsibility”: “Ours is a good church. We preach the word. We go out to evangelize. We have ministries for this or that”, even though the people in each church who actually are responsible for those actions are a very small minority. That does not stop the collective from taking credit for the actions of the few. It is much more difficult to associate oneself with God by taking up the personal responsibility to love Him and their neighbor, leading by example and service, and encouraging others to do the same.

For these reasons, it is difficult to say that there is such a thing as a “good church”. The sin of Corban is characterized by a system that produces bad fruit even if it looks like a good tree. It hardens the hearts of men, makes them slothful, and it centralizes the salty brightness of individual responsibility to a bureaucratic polity of dead religion and lip-service, thereby enslaving the laity who have willingly sold their birthright and legacy for a bowl of liturgical novelties.

The Gospel of the Kingdom necessarily and thoroughly confronts the sin of Corban. This is not new information. Jesus Christ traveled preaching about “the whole of the law” to address the apathy of people who took his name in vain and to confront the roots of that apathy. He desires a called-out body politic of believers, over which he is the head. The alternative “nullifies the word of God”. It may be comfortable, but it goes with the multitude to do not much of anything. Which is evil.

In addition to their liturgies and dead, innocuous orthopraxy being unusable for any bright, salty Christianity, the doctrines and what passes for orthodoxy in modern churches are also highly questionable. It is clear that Biblical terms, when applied to the Churchianity of today have very nebulous, hyper-spiritual, and arbitrary meanings:

“Seeking“, “establishing”, or “furthering” the Kingdom of God is assumed to be defined by any generally good deed or influence done by some professing Christian as part of some vast, unorganized, emotion-based, unseen, blind-faith catalogue of generally good deeds or influences done by other professing Christians, under some arbitrary standards that might make the cut, depending on the circumstances (but mainly on the whim of the speaker). This is also a touchy-feely concept where “furthering Christ’s kingdom” means having a general good influence over a negative touchy-feely “culture” and “world”. In reality, kingdoms are jurisdictional concepts with spiritual and moral directions of flow. The Kingdom of the world/culture of America is headed down the broad path which leads to destruction. It practices public religion where tax money goes to establish “justice” and welfare to magistrates (pagan gods) exist to outsource the individual responsibilities of the people. This kind of Kingdom will inevitably lead to social and economic ruination and collapse, read “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” This is the inherent nature of socialism. The Kingdom of the world/culture of Heaven practices pure/private religion, where every man is free from civil bondage, retains equitable rights to his property and family, and chooses to establish justice and provide for his neighbor, not through taxation and deferred responsibility, but through charity by coming together in an adhocracy to set the Lord’s table through ministers who serve the people by feeding Christ’s sheep.

“Idolatry” becomes any action or practice or even belief, lip service or doctrine, no matter how unrelated or nebulous or vague, that is generally bad and very possibly basically, seemingly “unchristian”. (Also on the whim of the speaker.)

“Paganism” is pretty much synonymous with “idolatry”, except it is moreso geared towards sets of superstition that compete with Churchianity, like Hinduism or Islam or Wicca or something like that.

“The world“, “worldly”, or “fleshy” are all pretty much also just synonymous with “idolatry” but, as if possible, are even more generic and nebulous, referring to anything from enjoying or participating in pop culture, to the presence of excessive materialism, to being lax in hyper-spiritual endeavors like showing up to churchy functions or listening to orating clergymen on podcasts. Churchians use phrases like “world” like they would “culture”: as a sort of ambient milieu of anything negative or sinful by the churchian’s standards, not well defined, but should make one feel bad or guilty. In reality, the concept of “world” comes from the Greek Kosmos meaning “an apt, harmonious arrangement, order, constitution, and system of government”. It recalls an idea about marshaling troops and is referring to the structure of the Pax Romana with its bureaucracy and heads of state and political endeavors and taxation. Christ’s kingdom is “not of that world”. Christians are “in that world, but not of that world”. They keep themselves “unstained of that world”.

“Christian liberty” is a perfectly decent term that has become grotesque and selfish in connotation, something akin to “this covers anything that I should be able to get away with without fear of criticism or confrontation by other christians.” As if it basically refers to licentiousness regarding the eating of pork or the wearing tank tops or the decorating of your house for random holidays or the drinking of alcohol or of smoking tobacco, or of choosing to meet in a church building or a home setting for sing-alongs, scripture reading, and sermonizing noise pollution. This train of thought is actually a far cry from what actually constitutes “Christian liberty.” It is not about all the things you selfishly want to do or justify to yourself as harmless, as if God even desires to “redeem” yoga or vaccines or mascara. These things may be harmless. They may not be. The Gospel still does not set you free from scrutiny and confrontation and being reasonable with your peers over hashing them out. True Christian liberty is exclusively “the right to be ruled by God”, as opposed to pagan civil governments of Caesar’s world. The Gospel redeems your life from the dominion of men, their necessity to make you slothful and covetous, and your rebellion against God that which has, through a reprobate mind, put you under the sovereignty of false gods in the form of politicians, magistrates and Benefactors who exercise authority: presidents, czars, kings, and caesars. It means taking back your personal responsibility to execute justice and show mercy, and be your neighbor’s welfare through charity. As opposed to the meat sacrificed to idols in taxation. Christian Liberty saves men from civil bondage in order to make them the literal, organized, structured Kingdom of God, performing almost all of the functions of human civil society, but through righteousness, voluntary service and Heavenly precepts.

No doubt that this glossary of popular terms, lifted from a cursory and lazy reading of Scripture can only serve to confuse brain-dead professing Christians and even baffle the King of Judea who does not desire for those who take his name to be so easily contented with sophistry. This stark confusion over both orthodoxy and orthopraxy in modern churches makes them prime and necessary locations for evangelism, and the preaching of the Gospel. Just like the “religious catacombs” familiar to the New Testament, Stephen’s sermon from the seventh chapter of Acts should be preached and emulated in front of every church during every religious service until either some semblance of revival arises, or a lot of division is exposed.

“Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it. When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth.”

The purpose of the early Christians in assembling together in pure religion to love God and neighbor was to establish a real, literal Kingdom of freefolk who depended on each other out of faith, hope, and charity through the love of Christ so that they did not have to depend each other out of social contracts, entitlements, and taxation. It was about the government of God with its servant-ministers being established as an alternative to the governments of Satan characterized by Benefactors who exercise authority. A congregation was a juridical community, each one consisting of ten families, and each family represented by one Elder, or Patriarch who held a natural authority over his possessions and his family, without any legal encumbrances from pagan administrations through legal titles, legal guardianship, or its related taxation.

To replace the socialist benefits and services invariably supplied by taxes in idolatrous citizenship, this congregation would have to perform all of the weightier matters usually outsourced to the administrations of authoritarian benefactors. They would have to establish God’s Law, perform justice and mercy, provide education and welfare, and be their brother’s keeper all out of freewill association and freewill offerings. The relationship between these families was facilitated by a minister who served them, networking them together, and networking the whole congregation to other congregations through their own servant minister. These ministers were called-out from the congregations as the “bride” and body politic of Christ, the servant-government of His literal Kingdom. Identical to the Levites, these ministers possess no private property or right to filial inheritance, holding all things common together as one body. They gave up all they had to be Christ’s disciples, and donated it to sustain the congregations of free people. In turn, this Assembly was sustained entirely by the tithes of the Elders, according to the performance of their service and their character. In this way, the Christians keep their government accountable, able to elect a new minister to serve them at any moment, rescinding their tithes if they proved to be unworthy of the office through some dereliction or malpractice.

The Elders of families would preside over their estates, according to the Dominion Mandate, working for the fruits of his labors, living by the sweat of his brow, making the most out of his land, livestock and other capital. It was from this provision that these free families would make offerings to the storehouses maintained by the ministers. When they gave up their burnt offerings, they also gave up any right to exercise authority over how it was redistributed. The ministers took this charity, and gave it to those who had need within the congregation. This network of charity sustained entire congregations in miraculous ways that socialist benefits and services never could, identical to the example Christ exemplified when he fed the 5000 elders and their families using this political model for society. This regular charity naturally extended to other congregations, across the entire known world, if need be, to secure their society against famines, dearths, or other disasters.

The purpose for Christians meeting together on the first day of the week, after taking their Sabbath the day before, was not to sing songs and listen to sophistry, but to come together to redistribute their charity in this manner, and to have community workdays to love their neighbors as themselves. The Sunday meeting replaced the the concept of city council meetings where idolaters outsource their personal responsibilities of adhocracy to tax-funded bureaucracies. The Lord’s Table of freewill charity replaced the tables of rulers who doled out socialist beneifts maintained by forced contributions. We have detailed that reality elsewhere.

Therefore, in order to establish an “anarchist church” (this is a redundancy, all true churches are anarchist by definition), you must begin to create one with your loved ones, friends, community, and like-minded associates. Begin to serve each other, put each other’s needs first, and start freeing each other from depending on human civil government in matters of health, education, welfare, righteousness, accountability, justice, and mercy. As a Christian endeavor, abolitionists do not incorporate 501c institutions under the authority of the Attorney General, but rather keep their aspirations pure, with Christ as the Head, to be sustained by His Providence.

As a result, we do not have to fundraise in order to keep our non-existent 501c status, which does no honor to God, but blasphemes the name of the one who instructs us to keep ourselves unstained from the world. 501C institutions and the church culture that surrounds them are antithetical to anything remotely Biblical. Anybody entertaining them as legitimate are either confused or are charlatans. And this is evident in the fact that most people go to church begrudgingly. They fall asleep in the pews and they critique the sermonizing and go through the motions and this discomfort and distaste is just a part of the accepted routine. But this relationship is complicated.

Even though they are annoyed at getting up early every Sunday morning to put on nice, uncomfortable clothes they would not otherwise subject themselves to, and drive to a building full of people with which they have little in common other than the building itself, where they stand and sit and stand and sit again, perforated by sing-song chanting and passively consuming the same theological milk they’ve been ingesting for the past few decades, they reserve the right to keep the necessary misgivings they have with this dead routine to themselves.

In fact, when they observe abolitionists outside pleading with them to slough off the chains of this very routine about which they internalize annoyance and disdain, they are quick to defend the very thing they spent all morning wishing they could abandon. They are confronted with a better way, one that actually honors God, and they violently thrash against it. They defend their false church. They strain gnats and swallow camels just to give lip service to Churchianity.

Do not take this idea for granted: Contrary to beasts and brutes, when offered freedom, men made in God’s image very often prefer the comforts of a cage. They are willing to go to Hell, so long as you do not open the door to spiritual, psychological, and civil freedom. The modern Christians are in need of repentance.

You may want to check out this list to see if there are already professing anarchists in your area who desire to do what the early Christians did. If you do not find one, we highly suggest you remain diligent in creating one anyway.