Jesus, anarchism and power: two thousand years of Christian revolution

History of Ideas · Christianity · Christian Anarchism · Justice and Power

From the earliest fraternal communities to emancipation movements, the history of a faith that has never ceased to question power.

Was Jesus an anarchist? Did the early Christians carry a revolution of equality? And how could a faith born around a man crucified by Roman authority become the religion of emperors, kings, and states, while inspiring resistance to their rule? These questions lead to the heart of a history marked by tensions: between conscience and obedience, sharing and property, universal brotherhood and political affiliations.

Christian anarchism actually exists. Tolstoy, Dorothy Day, Peter Kropotkin, and Jacques Ellul offer different expressions of it. Their convictions do not emerge from nothing: they reread the Gospels, the sharing of the early communities, and the primacy of God as reasons to challenge violence, exploitation, and the absolutization of human powers. But this lineage does not allow us to attribute to the apostles a nineteenth-century political program.

Our common thread will therefore be the following: the Christian requirement of brotherhood contains a critical power that Christian institutions themselves have not always known how to, or wanted to, embrace. It can question the Roman Empire, the privileges of a lord, economic inequalities, racism, or the contemporary transformation of the cross into an identity boundary.

1. Jesus the anarchist: a fruitful question, a word to define

In common language, anarchy is often confused with disorder. In political philosophy, anarchist traditions rather criticize domination and the legitimacy of imposed hierarchies. They envision forms of organization based on voluntary association, mutual aid, and autonomy. Their disagreements are numerous, particularly on property, violence, and the means of transforming society.

Christian anarchism starts from another entry point: fidelity to Jesus. For some of its representatives, the commandment to love, the refusal of revenge, and the primacy of conscience make evangelical life and participation in the coercive mechanisms of the state incompatible. Obedience to God thus becomes a limit opposed to any human claim to total obedience. This family is well identified by research on religious anarchism, but remains a minority in Christianity. [1]

However, applying this label directly to Jesus would be a shortcut. He belongs to first-century Judaism, in a world where religion, social order, and political power intersect. He announces the Kingdom of God; he writes neither a constitution, nor a treatise on the abolition of the state, nor a program for the industrial revolution.

The relevant question becomes: what aspects of his teaching allow for a radical critique of domination, and how have later readers drawn anarchist consequences from them? This formulation preserves the full force of the subject. It merely avoids making the ancients speak in a vocabulary that was not theirs.

2. The Jewish roots of justice and the universal

The radicality of Jesus is not understood against his Judaism, but within it. The account of the Exodus places the liberation from slavery at the center of a collective memory. The prophets denounce oppression, corrupt judgments, and a piety that is indifferent to the poor. The protection of the widow, the orphan, and the stranger already belongs to the biblical language of justice.

Presenting Christianity as the invention of compassion in the midst of a supposedly closed Judaism would therefore be historically false and theologically damaging. Jesus, his first disciples, and Paul inherit Jewish texts, debates, and expectations. The conflicts reported in the Gospels are first and foremost part of this plurality; they do not justify any collective guilt attributed to the Jews.

The Magnificat, in the Gospel of Luke, gives this hope a striking form: the powerful are brought low, the humble are lifted up, the hungry are filled. This song does not describe an administrative reform; it expresses a reversal of the gaze cast upon greatness. Closeness to God is measured neither by rank nor by fortune. Luke 1:46-55.

This point counts for the entire rest: the Christian universal should not erase the people in which Jesus was born. It becomes contradictory when it transforms into cultural superiority or anti-Judaism. The Second Vatican Council will explicitly recall this link to Judaism and reject antisemitism in Nostra aetate. [2]

3. The Gospel facing domination, wealth, and exclusion

Serving rather than making one feel their power

In Mark 10:42-45, Jesus takes as a counterexample the leaders who impose their power. To his disciples who argue about precedence, he proposes the figure of the servant. He does not simply ask the leader to be likable: he shifts the very criterion of greatness. Rank no longer exempts one from serving those who have no rank.

One understands the political scope that libertarian readers will give to this passage. If an authority judges itself by the way it serves, its prestige is never enough to legitimize it. This requirement also applies to religious authority. A Christian leader cannot be exempt from it on the grounds that he speaks in the name of the sacred. Mark 10.

Wealth under the gaze of the poor

The same chapter presents a rich man called to give to the poor. The stake is not a romantic fascination with misery: it is the power of possessions over the heart and over relationships. The evangelical question forces us to look at what accumulation allows, what it prevents from being shared, and the people it leaves aside.

This language can fuel critiques of capitalism; it does not in itself constitute a complete economic theory. Christians will draw different conclusions from it: alms, community life, social reform, property subject to duties, or a break with accumulation. Their divergence is over institutions and means, as much as over the interpretation of the texts.

The neighbor is not only the one who resembles us

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the one who shows himself close to the wounded belongs to a group separated from Jesus's interlocutors by religious and historical boundaries. Solidarity does not depend on a shared identity. The question shifts: instead of determining who deserves our help, it is about becoming the neighbor of the person encountered. Luke 10:25-37.

Matthew 25, for its part, associates the relationship with Christ with helping the poor, the stranger, the sick, and the prisoner. The precise interpretations of the expression "the least" are the subject of exegetical discussions; the Christian reception of this text has made it a major foundation of works of mercy. Matthew 25:31-46.

Loving the enemy: a radicality that is not reduced to passivity

The Sermon on the Mount refuses that the reciprocity of hatred becomes an ultimate rule. The love of the enemy and the refusal of revenge do not require finding injustice acceptable. They pose a difficult question: how to resist without reproducing what one combats?

Tolstoy and Christian pacifists will read these passages as a prohibition of violence. Other Christian traditions will admit, under conditions, the use of force to protect. There is therefore a real internal debate, not a unanimously received solution. The central place of these words explains, however, why non-violence can present itself as an evangelical requirement, and not just as an effective strategy. Matthew 5.

4. The early Christians: brotherhood, sharing, and contradictions

Putting in common so that no one lacks

The Acts of the Apostles describe the Jerusalem community sharing resources distributed according to needs. Property ceases, in this picture, to be a right indifferent to the neighbor's distress. What matters is that no one remains abandoned within the community. Acts 4:32-35.

This passage must be read as the theological account of a communal ideal, not as the census of all ancient Churches. The communities were diverse, and the material modalities of their lives are not uniformly known to us. The account of Ananias and Sapphira also indicates that the sale of a property was not presented as a general obligation: the problem exposed is that of deception. Acts 5:1-11.

One can therefore speak of communal sharing and a practical critique of proprietary selfishness. Speaking immediately of state communism would be just as anachronistic as seeing it as a completed anarchist system. The historical interest lies precisely in a lived solidarity that precedes these modern categories.

Equality in Christ: a promise with unfinished effects

Galatians 3:28 affirms that the distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free man, man and woman no longer determine unity in Christ. Its context is that of faith, baptism, and access to the promise. One must therefore not transform the verse into an ancient declaration of civil rights. But it challenges any claim to reserve belonging to Christ to an origin or a status. Galatians 3.

This religious equality did not suddenly abolish slavery or gender hierarchies. In the letter to Philemon, Paul asks that Onesimus be received as a brother, without formulating a general abolition of the servile institution. The text opens a moral tension rather than legally resolving it. Philemon 1.

Economic differences also persist: in Corinth, Paul reproaches the participants of the communal meal for humiliating those who have nothing. This protest is valuable, because it prevents the mythification of origins. Brotherhood already clashes with the behaviors of the believers themselves. 1 Corinthians 11:17-34.

The revolutionary legacy is located in this visible gap: if we call ourselves brothers, how can we continue to treat each other as beings of unequal value? Later movements will be able to take up the question and push its social consequences further.

5. Facing Rome: conscience, disobedience, and refusal of idolatry

The early Christians do not constitute a homogeneous political front. They live in the cities and provinces of the Empire, hold jobs, maintain family ties, and often seek the possibility of a peaceful existence. The persecutions are neither constant nor identical according to places and periods.

The conflict appears notably when the religious gestures expected by the authorities become tests of fidelity. Around 112, the correspondence of Pliny the Younger and Trajan shows that the persistent refusal to abjure can lead to condemnation. For the believers concerned, recognizing civil order does not mean rendering worship to its powers. [3]

Obeying God rather than men

In Acts 5:29, the apostles oppose their religious duty to the prohibition of preaching. The passage does not directly target a program against the Empire: it reports a conflict with the authorities seeking to interrupt their mission. Its reception will, however, overflow this situation. It will become a reference for thinking about the disobedience of conscience. Acts 5.

Revelation offers another language, symbolic and visionary: that of powers that demand adoration and submission. Its anti-imperial reading highlights the danger of an order that presents itself as indisputable and claims to capture even religious fidelity. It is not to be confused with a manual of insurrection. Revelation 13.

The difficulty of Romans 13

The same New Testament contains a call to submission to authorities in Romans 13:1-7. Paul attributes to them a function of order and mentions the payment of taxes. A dossier on Christian anarchism that removed this passage would not be serious.

Interpretations diverge: recognition of the civil function, advice addressed to a vulnerable community, or obedience limited by the service of the good. Christian anarchists reread it in the light of the entirety of the Gospels and refuse to make it an unlimited authorization granted to the state. Other Christians find in it a more positive foundation of political authority. Romans 13.

The historical conclusion is precise: sources attest a tension between accommodation and resistance, not a demonstrated collective will to overthrow all states. The philosophical conclusion can be more radical: when conscience ceases to belong entirely to the sovereign, its domination meets a limit.

6. Fish, anchor, and chrism: the symbols of origins

The images of the catacombs make this faith tangible. They express hope, salvation, prayer, and belonging to a community. Some could also allow for discreet recognition. But one must avoid transforming every motif into a clandestine password or presenting the catacombs as permanent refuges: they are first and foremost funerary spaces. [4]

The transition from signs engraved near the dead to emblems linked to imperial power summarizes a major transformation: the faith of a minority gradually becomes a public language of legitimacy. The symbol can retain its spiritual depth while changing its political use.

7. From Constantine to Christendom: the risk of power

The 4th century profoundly changes the conditions of Christian life. In 313, the measures associated with Constantine and Licinius, traditionally referred to as the Edict of Milan, guarantee religious freedom and the restitution of confiscated property. Constantine then favors the Churches and convenes the Council of Nicaea in 325. This does not mean that he invents Christianity or that all the inhabitants of the Empire immediately convert.

Another stage occurs in 380: under Theodosius I, with Gratian and Valentinian II, the Edict of Thessalonica affirms the norm of Nicene Christianity. The transformation is gradual, varied by region, and accompanied by conflicts among Christians. [5]

For communities that have experienced repression, imperial protection represents an immense change. It allows them to build, teach, rescue, and organize publicly. But it also exposes religious leaders to court logics, the interests of the sovereign, and the temptation to use coercion against dissidents.

The paradox becomes lasting: a Church can denounce injustice while benefiting from the order that produces it. It can protect people from arbitrariness and participate in exclusionary systems. Neither the account of total corruption starting with Constantine nor that of progress without shadow gives an account of this history.

Furthermore, the following centuries do not experience a single bloc called "the Church" facing a bloc called "power". Bishops, popes, monasteries, emperors, kings, and urban authorities negotiate, compete, and oppose each other. The plurality of powers can open spaces for recourse; it can also multiply constraints. To deepen the ancient framework, see our dossier on the Roman Empire and the early Christians.

8. Francis of Assisi: poverty as an appeal

At the beginning of the 13th century, Francis of Assisi places voluntary poverty and closeness to the excluded at the center of his life. His relationship with lepers is emblematic: conversion also takes place in the meeting of people whom fear and disgust kept at a distance. His self-emptying challenges the social obviousness that success means acquiring, distinguishing oneself, and commanding. [6]

However, Francis does not found an anarchist party nor does he simply seek to abolish the ecclesiastical institution. He asks for recognition for his way of life and remains part of the Church. His critique is all the more singular because it acts from this belonging: it recalls a requirement that prestige and comfort can cover up.

In 1219, his meeting with Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil, during the Fifth Crusade, offers another image of the relationship with the adversary. It would be anachronistic to make it a modern conference on pluralism: Francis carries a missionary desire. But the personal meeting crosses a world of war and shows that the other is not reduced to the figure of the enemy. [6]

What libertarian sensibilities can recognize here is a way of inhabiting the world differently: renouncing certain privileges, sharing vulnerability, preferring a direct relationship to the logic of conquest. It is a kinship of inspiration, not proof that all Franciscan traditions would have been anarchist.

9. Saint Louis: the oak, the lords, and the limits of royal justice

What the Vincennes oak really tells

Joinville reports that Louis IX received people who came to present their cases at Vincennes, sitting by an oak tree. The image became an icon of French justice. It expresses a strong aspiration: the sovereign must be able to hear complaints, even beyond the intermediaries who might stifle them.

However, the research of Marie Dejoux and her colleagues invites us to also look at the institutions: reparation inquiries, procedures, courts, and the development of royal justice. An audience under a tree does not summarize the government of a kingdom. The ideal of an accessible king accompanies the construction of a stronger sovereignty. [7]

Could a powerful lord be troubled?

The case of Enguerrand IV of Coucy, generally dated 1259, allows us to answer without inventing a scene. The lord is prosecuted after having hanged three young men who had hunted on his lands, without a regular trial. The king wants to affirm that seigneurial power does not exempt from justice. The outcome also results from power relations and compromises; it does not correspond to a modern judicial equality.

Above all, we must separate this episode from the Vincennes narrative. We cannot tell that these victims were peasants whose lord Saint Louis would have judged under the oak: the sources generally present them as young nobles. The distinction makes the example stronger, without removing its power. [8]

A Christian justice, but not yet universal in its effects

Louis IX is not a forerunner of anarchism: he strengthens the monarchy. His conception of justice shows rather that a Christian power could be held, in its own language, accountable for the abuses of the powerful. Authority gives itself a moral obligation, even when it simultaneously consolidates its domination.

This portrait would be misleading without the exclusions of his reign. The measures against the Jews, the burning of Talmud manuscripts, and the imposition of the rack in 1269 manifest the limits of an order that thinks of justice within a coercive religious project. The crusades and the repression of behaviors considered as sins also belong to this context. [9]

The lesson is therefore not that a saintly king would have realized contemporary equality. It is more demanding: an ideal of justice can produce real protections and coexist with persecutions. Christian history forces us to examine both, even when it disturbs an admiring memory. Our history of France, from Gaul to the kings places this reign in the construction of the kingdom.

10. Diggers and Quakers: the Bible becomes social contestation

The Diggers of 1649: the land and the right to live

In the middle of the English Revolution, Gerrard Winstanley and his companions begin in 1649 to collectively cultivate lands at St George’s Hill, in Surrey. Nicknamed the Diggers, they present themselves as "true levelers". Their manifesto contests an organization in which a few landowners have the land while others must depend on them to subsist.

Their argument is biblical and spiritual: creation cannot be reserved for a minority. Their response does not consist only in waiting for a reform; they put into practice a community of work and subsistence. The manifesto affirms a peaceful intention. [10]

Qualifying them as communist or libertarian forerunners can help compare ideas, provided their context is preserved. They are not the anticipated members of a 19th-century organization. Their importance lies in the meeting between religious language, critique of land ownership, and collective experimentation.

The Quakers: conscience, equality, and self-criticism

The Quaker movement, born in the 17th century, gives a major place to conscience and the spiritual value of each person. The refusal of certain marks of social deference, the place of women in religious life, and the testimony of peace can challenge hierarchies considered as natural.

Quakers then actively participate in the struggles against slavery. However, it should not be forgotten that some themselves owned slaves and that abolitionism imposed itself through internal debates and conversions. Contemporary Quaker resources also recognize the limits of the equality effectively granted to Black people. [11]

This example shows a conscious influence of Christian convictions on emancipation, but also a historical work of correcting Christian practices. Fraternity does not act magically: it must be taken seriously against habits, interests, and sometimes its own community.

11. Tolstoy: refusing to participate in violence

Leo Tolstoy is one of the major names of modern Christian anarchism. In The Kingdom of God is Within You, published in 1893, he develops a demanding reading of the commandment of non-resistance to evil by violence. It is not about approving evil, but about refusing the means that, according to him, perpetuate it.

The State rests on the possibility of coercing, punishing, and waging war. Tolstoy therefore asks the Christian not to cooperate with these mechanisms: military service, oaths of allegiance, and the exercise of institutional violence become matters of conscience. His critique also targets the Churches when they bless what he considers contrary to the teaching of Jesus. [12]

His position does not represent institutional Russian Orthodoxy; his relationship with it is deeply conflictual. This is precisely what matters: Christianity can become, in one of its readers, an argument against the alliance of political and religious authorities.

Tolstoyan circles experiment with simple forms of life, shared work, and refusal of violence. Their horizon is a transformation that begins with daily conduct. Waiting for a perfect regime does not exempt one from ceasing, from now on, to participate in what one judges unjust.

This thought however meets a formidable objection: how to protect a victim when the aggressor refuses all reciprocity? Pacifists answer with different forms of active resistance; other Christians believe that protection can require proportionate force. Presenting the debate allows us to measure Tolstoyan radicalism without transforming it into an easy solution.

12. Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin: the anarchism of hospitality

The Catholic Worker was born in New York in 1933, around Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, in the context of the Great Depression. A newspaper, houses of hospitality, and community experiments articulate social reflection and concrete aid. It is not enough to defend the poor in theory: one must welcome a person, prepare a meal, share a living space. [13]

In Dorothy Day, Catholicism, personalism, pacifism, and anarchist sympathies meet. A text from 1958 notably explicates these principles, with the importance of manual work and an action that starts from people. Mutual aid must not become a simple impersonal service rendered to an administrative category. [14]

This current shifts the revolutionary question. How to build relationships that effectively reduce dependence, loneliness, and humiliation? How to make community something other than a device directed from above? Hospitality becomes political because it changes the place given to those who are considered useless.

Day however remains attached to Catholic faith and sacramental life. This articulation forbids a too simple equation between Christian anarchism and the rejection of all ecclesial belonging. It manifests a lived tension between religious institution, freedom of conscience, and social critique.

We must also recognize the practical difficulty: welcoming requires time, resources, limits, and responsibilities. A voluntary community does not automatically escape power relations. Its requirement is precisely to make them visible and to correct them, instead of believing that good intention is enough.

13. Jacques Ellul: no human power is absolute

The French Protestant thinker Jacques Ellul dedicates Anarchy and Christianity, published in 1988, to a relationship that many consider impossible. How to bring together a faith often associated with obedience and a critical thought of authority? He answers by rereading the biblical texts and the mechanisms by which societies sacralize their own powers. [15]

In Ellul, recognizing God does not mean giving a blank check to those who claim to represent Him. It is on the contrary refusing that the State, the nation, technology, or an organization become the ultimate horizon of human life. Anarchy must be understood as a critique of domination, not as a taste for chaos.

This perspective does not promise that a simple change of regime would make human beings blameless. The mechanisms of power can reappear in the institutions born to fight them. Vigilance must therefore also target the means of emancipation: a movement that crushes consciences in the name of freedom contradicts its own goal.

Ellul does not resolve all the tensions of political Christianity. He nevertheless forces us to ask a lasting question: when a Christian obeys, what do they really obey? A requirement of justice, a fear, a habit, or an authority that has become untouchable?

14. Abolition, civil rights, and liberation Christianities

Real influences, without a single genealogy

The same tradition could have served to legitimize slavery and to fight it. The history of Christian societies includes participation in the slave trade, the possession of human beings, and religious justifications of inequality. It also includes resistances nourished by the conviction of a common dignity. Recognizing the latter does not whitewash the former.

The 2023 declaration of the Holy See on the "Doctrine of Discovery" recalls this conflictual history: it rejects this doctrine and recognizes that pontifical documents were used in colonial enterprises that harmed indigenous peoples. Universalism therefore does not exempt us from examining what was done in its name. [16]

Martin Luther King: loving without resigning

Martin Luther King explicitly articulates the Christian ethic of love and the methods of nonviolent resistance associated with Gandhi. Boycott, mobilization, and civil disobedience do not consist in passively waiting for the adversary to change. They make injustice visible and organize collective pressure. [17]

King does not therefore belong to Christian anarchism in the same sense as Tolstoy. He fights for guaranteed rights and for the transformation of institutions. This difference is essential: a common Christian inspiration can lead to reforming the State, resisting it, or contesting its principle.

Catholic social doctrine: another path

With Rerum novarum in 1891, Leo XIII addressed the condition of workers, the duties of employers, workers' associations, and the responsibility of public authority. He also defended private property and criticized collectivist socialism. This text cannot therefore be annexed to anarchism. It bears witness to another way of challenging economic injustice, by recognizing a positive role for institutions. [18]

In the 20th century, liberation theologies particularly highlighted the condition of the poor and the critique of structures of oppression. They are diverse, debated, and are confused neither with a party nor with a single method. They broaden the scope: faith may call for transforming the conditions that produce misery, beyond merely helping its victims.

The strongest lineage is therefore plural. There are direct influences, when actors themselves explain their debt to the Gospels; transmissions through communities; and similarities that do not demonstrate causality. To claim that all modern revolutions descend from Christianity would erase the Jewish, ancient, humanist, rationalist, and non-European sources of emancipation.

15. Far-right: when identity instrumentalizes faith

Naming the contradiction without confusing all believers

The problem is not reduced to whether a discourse uses crosses, quotes saints, or celebrates cathedrals. One must ask what is done with these references. A faith that calls for recognizing one's neighbor can be transformed into a sign of belonging used to designate those who would never fully be one of us. It is this transformation that we call here instrumentalization.

It is documented in several far-right and populist radical-right currents. Their relationship with Christianity varies: actual religious convictions, cultural attachment, electoral strategy, or even coexistence with anti-Christian sensibilities. This diversity does not eliminate the critique; it forces it to be applied to identifiable discourses, practices, and mechanisms.

Attachment to a country, its heritage, or a religious tradition does not in itself imply a logic of exclusion. The rupture appears when origin, supposed religion, or birth are used to rank dignity, to build collective guilt, or to make the suffering of some acceptable.

The "identity Christianity" studied by researchers

In The Godless Crusade, Tobias Cremer studies the use of Christianity in the identity politics of the Western populist right. His chapter dedicated to France notably shows how Christian and secular references can be mobilized as cultural markers against Islam, without a necessary rapprochement with social positions or Christian institutions. He also analyzes the tensions between the National Rally, Éric Zemmour, and the Catholic Church on these issues. The aim here is to present research published in 2023, not to freeze the set of current positions of these actors. [19]

Other works compare European discourses of "Christian civilization". They show how a continental identity can unite different nationalisms and represent Muslims or migrants as an external threat. Christianity then becomes a heritage to defend against a group rather than a spiritual practice requiring one to meet a person. [20]

Why this strikes at the heart of Christian ethics

The contradiction does not need a partisan slogan to be formulated. It appears when the purposes are confronted:

• Making origin a measure of value contradicts the universal vocation of the Christian community.
• Treating the stranger as an enemy by nature conflicts with the shift in gaze proposed by the Good Samaritan.
• Sacralizing a leader, a nation, or force removes power from the moral examination to which the Gospel subjects it.
• Exalting symbols while despising the vulnerable separates the display of religion from the concrete requirements of mercy.

This confrontation is an argued theological reading. It does not claim to read individual consciences or decide the intimate faith of each voter. It allows, on the other hand, to clearly state that racism, dehumanization, and the worship of domination are incompatible with the equal dignity and love of neighbor claimed by Christian faith.

Legitimate debates remain about public policies, their means, their capacities, and their effects. These disagreements do not give the right to strip a person of their status as a neighbor. Dignity constitutes a moral limit to the way of debating as well as the way of acting.

The extreme history of a Christianity submitted to race

Nazi Germany offers a precise historical case, which should not be used as an automatic equivalence with all current movements. The Deutsche Christen, or "German Christians", sought to adapt Protestantism to Nazi ideology, notably by introducing racial criteria into it. The ecclesiastical opposition to this undertaking was real, but fragmentary; defending the autonomy of the Churches did not always imply defending all the victims of the regime. [21]

In 1937, Mit brennender Sorge condemns the divinization of race, people, state, and those who hold power. This text allows the question to be formulated in the very categories of Catholicism: placing the nation or race above the divine requirement amounts to idolatry. However, it is not enough on its own to tell the whole story of Catholic attitudes toward Nazism. [22]

Christian responsibilities must remain visible: anti-Jewish heritages, accommodations, silences, and collaborations belong to this history, alongside resistances and aid. Instrumentalization does not always come from outside. It can also be accepted or produced by believers and religious leaders.

A Christian memory that must be able to criticize itself

The most faithful response to the universal is therefore not to declare all of Christian history innocent. It consists in measuring its acts against its requirements, then recognizing what contradicted them. Nostra aetate condemns anti-Semitic discrimination and persecution; Dignitatis humanae affirms the right not to be forced in religious matters. These texts of 1965 do not dissolve faith: they explain the consequences of human dignity for a pluralistic society. [2]

This criterion also applies beyond the far-right. A cause that claims to liberate but authorizes dehumanization must undergo the same examination. This universality of critique must not, however, be used to dodge the precise identity instrumentalizations studied here.

16. Leo XIV and human dignity: an ever-present requirement

The timeliness of this debate does not rest on an isolated quote circulating on social media. It can be based on identified pontifical texts. In Dilexi te, dated October 4, 2025, Leo XIV places the love of the poor at the center of Christian life. Helping vulnerable people is not an optional supplement added to faith. [23]

In his message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees on September 27, 2026, the Pope particularly draws attention to displaced children. He insists on the uniqueness of persons, their protection, and their dignity, rather than their reduction to numbers or categories. [24]

The encyclical Magnifica humanitas, of May 15, 2026, also develops this perspective, notably in paragraph 81: dignified welcome, integration, and action on the causes that force people to leave must be thought of together. It links the right to seek a safe life to the possibility of staying in one's country in peace. [25]

These teachings do not make the Pope an anarchist. Catholic social doctrine recognizes a role for public authorities and institutional cooperation. Their proximity to our subject lies elsewhere: no political organization can treat dignity as a privilege reserved for its members.

It is therefore possible to study Christian anarchism and the pontifical word together without confusing them. The former can challenge the coercive structure of the state; the latter also calls institutions to serve the common good. They can meet in the refusal to make the human being an instrument, an abstract threat, or a negligible variable.

17. Chronology and lineages: what connects, what distinguishes

This chronology does not draw a continuous organization. It gathers moments when faith nourishes an inquiry into justice. Saint Louis, Tolstoy, Day, and King do not propose the same policy. Distinguishing them allows us to understand what really circulates between the centuries: texts, gestures, objections, and reinterpretations of hopes.

A fraternity that still obliges

Christianity is not only the history of a religion that became powerful. It is also that of voices that asked this power to be held accountable. Its texts were invoked to maintain an order; they also allowed its contradictions to be revealed.

Christian anarchists give this tension a particularly radical response: to live mutual aid now, to refuse to make coercion sacred, and to seek relationships that do not rest on domination. Other Christians respond through the reform of institutions, social justice, or the guarantee of rights. History does not make them interchangeable.

It nevertheless leaves a common question: what is the value of a proclaimed fidelity if it changes nothing about the fate of the one who is humiliated? And what becomes of the universal when it serves to draw a moral boundary between persons worthy of attention and those whose suffering one could ignore?

A faith centered on a crucified man cannot make the contempt of the weak its ideal without contradicting its own narrative. It is in this requirement, always to be renewed and never definitively acquired, that the revolutionary power of Christian fraternity remains.

18. Frequently asked questions

Was Jesus an anarchist?

Not in the sense of a political philosophy formed in the 19th century. His teaching on service, wealth, and love of enemies has, however, inspired Christian anarchist interpretations. It is more accurate to speak of a libertarian reading of the Gospels than of Jesus's political affiliation.

Did the early Christians want to overthrow the Roman Empire?

It cannot be stated collectively. The texts bear witness to sharing, religious resistance, and disobedience, but also to calls to respect civil authority. Their hope for the Kingdom of God is not reduced to a strategy of seizing or destroying power.

Who are the main representatives of Christian anarchism?

Tolstoy, Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, and Jacques Ellul are among the major references, with important differences. The Diggers are rather presented as precursors. Not all Christians committed to social justice are anarchists.

Is Christianity left-wing or right-wing?

It precedes these categories and has inspired multiple commitments. This does not prevent confronting a political position with the requirements it claims to respect. Human dignity, love of neighbor, and the refusal of idolatry can serve as critical criteria without becoming the monopoly of a party.

Why speak of the instrumentalization of Christianity by the far-right?

Because research documents the use of Christian references as identity boundaries against groups designated as foreigners. The critique is directed at this mechanism and at exclusionary practices, without assimilating every conservative believer or every voter into the same intention.

Did Saint Louis defend the weak against the lords?

His reign developed royal justice and the possibility of challenging the powerful. But it also strengthened the monarchy and applied repressive religious policies. The Vincennes oak and the Coucy affair must be distinguished.

Does Christian nonviolence mean doing nothing?

No. It can lead to civil disobedience, boycotts, non-cooperation, and mutual aid. Its defenders refuse to confuse the absence of violence with the acceptance of injustice. The limits and conditions of this position remain debated among Christians.

19. Sources and reading leads

Editorial method. This dossier is a synthesis of documented popularization and an essay of reading, not a peer-reviewed academic publication. The biblical references refer to the texts; the historical works shed light on their context and reception. The institutional texts set out the position of their authors, without constituting by themselves an impartial history of the institutions. The interpretations proposed in the article are distinguished from attested events.

Biblical texts

The links embedded in the text refer to the AELF liturgical translation of Mark 10; Matthew 5 and 25; Luke 1 and 10; Acts 4 and 5; Galatians 3; Romans 13; 1 Corinthians 11; Philemon; Revelation 13. The passages are primarily paraphrased and commented on.

History, Political Philosophy, and Documents

1. Religious anarchism. Andrew Fiala, Anarchism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, particularly the section on religious anarchism. For further reading: Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel, 2010; and his article on anarcho-pacifism, International Studies Quarterly, 2022.
2. Vatican II. Nostra aetate, October 28, 1965, particularly paragraphs 4 and 5; Dignitatis humanae, December 7, 1965, particularly paragraph 2.
3. Christians and Roman authorities. Pliny the Younger, Letters, X, 96–97, correspondence with Trajan; presentation and excerpts in Christians on Trial, Christian History Institute.
4. Archaeology and symbols. Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, The Christian Catacombs and file on ancient Christian symbols; Catacombs of Saint Callixtus, Symbols. Uses are to be understood within their funerary context.
5. Christianization of the Empire. World History Encyclopedia, Early Christianity and landmarks of the growth of Christianity. For further reading: Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom.
6. Francis of Assisi. Commission on the Franciscan Intellectual-Spiritual Tradition, Saint Francis: The Poor Man of Assisi and The Franciscan Embrace of the Other; reminder of the 1219 meeting in the general audience of Pope Francis on February 6, 2019. For further reading: André Vauchez, Francis of Assisi. Between History and Memory, 2009.
7. Justice of Saint Louis. Laboratoire de médiévistique occidentale de Paris, Looking Back at the Justice of Saint Louis, a program led by Marie Dejoux. Marie Dejoux, Pierre-Anne Forcadet, Vincent Martin, and Liêm Tuttle, The Justice of Saint Louis. In the Shadow of the Oak, 2024. The account of Vincennes comes from Joinville, Life of Saint Louis.
8. Coucy Affair. Archives départementales de l’Aisne, Deed of Gift of Enguerrand IV of Coucy to the Abbey of Saint-Nicolas-au-Bois; Marie Dejoux, Louis IX, Royal Justice, and the Investigation: Looking Back at the Enguerrand de Coucy Affair, 2014. Some access may be limited.
9. The Limits of Royal Justice. See the previous collective work and its review in Le Monde, June 17, 2024, on the moral, political, and repressive dimensions of this justice.
10. Diggers. Gerrard Winstanley and his companions, The True Levellers Standard Advanced, 1649, primary text available in transcription. The categories of "precursor" or "proto-anarchism" are retrospective readings.
11. Quakers, equality, and slavery. Quaker.org, How Do Quakers Practice Equality and Equity? and William Penn, resources that also address the internal contradictions of this history.
12. Tolstoy. The Kingdom of God Is Within You, English translation available on Project Gutenberg; first publication of the work in 1893. See also Christoyannopoulos, Tolstoy’s Political Thought, 2020.
13. Catholic Worker. History of the Catholic Worker Movement, history published by the movement. For an academic approach: From Union Square to Heaven: Dorothy Day and the Origin of Catholic Worker Anarchism, in Radical Gotham.
14. Dorothy Day. Workers of the World Unite Under Christ, Light of the World, 1958, primary text on the principles of the Catholic Worker.
15. Jacques Ellul. Anarchie et christianisme, Atelier de création libertaire, 1988; bibliography of the Jacques Ellul International Association and presentation of his biblical reading.
16. Christianity and colonization. Dicastères pour la culture et l’éducation et pour le service du développement humain intégral, joint declaration on the "Doctrine of Discovery", March 30, 2023.
17. Martin Luther King. Pilgrimage to Nonviolence, 1960, document preserved by the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford; notice on nonviolence.
18. Social doctrine. Leo XIII, Rerum novarum, May 15, 1891. Liberation theologies constitute a distinct set; for further reading: Gustavo Gutiérrez, Teología de la liberación, 1971.
19. Christianity and the populist right. Tobias Cremer, The Godless Crusade: Religion, Populism and Right-Wing Identity Politics in the West, Cambridge University Press, 2023; notably chapter 10 on the French case. Public summary; full text may require institutional access.
20. Discourse of civilization. Reconciling National and Supranational Identities: Civilizationism in European Far-Right Discourse, Perspectives on Politics, Cambridge University Press.
21. Churches and Nazism. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, The German Churches and the Nazi State and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
22. Critique of political idolatry. Pius XI, Mit brennender Sorge, March 14, 1937, notably paragraphs 8 to 11.
23. Leo XIV and the poor. Dilexi te, October 4, 2025.
24. Leo XIV and displaced children. Message for the 112th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, 2026.
25. Leo XIV and social justice. Magnifica humanitas, May 15, 2026, notably paragraph 81.

Illustrations: artistic evocations, not archival documents or archaeological reconstructions. File prepared for Le Journal d’Aléthos-Verités, October 2026.