Intersections of Christianity and Anarchism

(The following is a preview of Chapter 12 of the recently released The Conscious Resistance Trilogy by Derrick Broze and John Vibes. To read the full chapter pick up a copy of the trilogy!)

There is no doubt that unimaginable suffering and division have been caused by the political organizations that formed around Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and the other religions of the world. However, as we intend to explore in the following chapters, there is ample evidence to suggest these religions all carry knowledge from similar ancient teachings. Sadly, the hierarchies of these organized religions perverted these teachings according to the politics of the time.

The biblical accounts of Jesus were not consolidated and printed until roughly 300 years after his death. At that time, his followers had caused a massive social upheaval, which threatened the established religious and state powers. Even in his time, Jesus was an enemy of the state and an enemy of the established religions for his radical views of peace, freedom, and equality. The established religious order of the time was the “state-church” of the Roman government, and they were so threatened by his philosophy that they silenced him.

However, his death did not silence his message, and his ideas spread all over the empire. Fearful that this anti-establishment movement would break down their spiritual monopoly, the government developed a plan to corrupt the message of Christ and use his cult status as a banner for their religious institution.

The institution responsible for the death of Christ and the persecution of his followers was now planning to merge his popular image with their dogmatic tradition. In 325 A.D., the Roman Church held the Council of Nicaea, a meeting of ranking church figures. They discussed how they would deal with the explosion of the Christian philosophy in their society. The church knew that if they let things continue as they were, all of their subjects would convert to Christianity in a very short time. They had to find a way to subvert this trend and convert the Christians back to the traditional structure to maintain control.

To achieve this goal, the establishment decided to merge Christian teachings with their own in such a way that the radical message of peace and freedom was replaced with the hierarchy of the Roman church. The outcome of the Council of Nicaea stated that Jesus Christ was the son of God and that he was to be treated as a divine figure. This went against Christ’s insistence that he was only a messenger and that people should follow his message, not worship him. There is a great deal of controversy surrounding the divinity of Christ, and many say that he didn’t want organized churches in his name.

Christian followers, who mostly belonged to the working illiterate class, were deceived by the church into supporting the Council’s changes, even celebrating the fact that the church had finally formally recognized their savior. Most Christians did not understand the true implications of the terms that their rulers laid out at the Council of Nicaea. The church then used “the divinity of Christ” as supporting evidence for all of their philosophies even though the issue of divinity had been decided at the conference.

With the image and following of Jesus now a part of their church, the establishment was able to neutralize the social movement of Christianity from within. Once the state molded the Christian ideologies to fit its own political agenda, it was also able to dictate an “official” but corrupted recording of history. The church focused only on their fabricated depictions of Christ’s birth and death and gave very little mention of what he actually stood for and what he did throughout his life. Certain historical accounts of Jesus have been suppressed by the religious institutions because the reality of his political struggle would expose many of the primary falsehoods of our authoritarian society.

This is the way the establishment has “watered down” and misdirected the revolutionary message of Jesus. This is the most successful strategy of silencing and corrupting revolutionary movements, and it is the ruling class which it when they are backed up against a wall. They know attempts to fully eradicate a social movement only make that movement stronger and give it more credibility, so instead they corrupt the message and turn it into a tool of social control. Even in the accounts of Jesus that have not been destroyed by the church, we can see his apparent opposition towards the oppressive systems of government, banking, and organized religion. In all of the biblical depictions of Christ, he has a peaceful state of mind, except when he is dealing with “the money changers.”

According to biblical writings, Jesus used physical force to throw the money changers out of a temple, which was the only account of him ever getting physical with anyone. The money changers were an ancient banking cartel that manipulated the ancient world by lending money to governments and applying interest. Just like today, the money changers of biblical times were deeply embedded with the government.

This is the way the establishment has “watered down” and misdirected the revolutionary message of Jesus. This is the most successful strategy of silencing and corrupting revolutionary movements, and it is the ruling class which it when they are backed up against a wall. They know attempts to fully eradicate a social movement only make that movement stronger and give it more credibility, so instead they corrupt the message and turn it into a tool of social control. Even in the accounts of Jesus that have not been destroyed by the church, we can see his apparent opposition towards the oppressive systems of government, banking, and organized religion. In all of the biblical depictions of Christ, he has a peaceful state of mind, except when he is dealing with “the money changers.”

To continue reading please purchase The Conscious Resistance Trilogy…