Books on Christian Anarchism

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Christian Anarchism

If you are looking for books on Christian Anarchism there are several places to start online. Here are just some of them:

• Good Reads has a list of “Best Christian anarchist books” here: http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/13368.Best_Christian_anarchist_books
• Worldcat’s category for “Christian Anarchism” is here: https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=su%3AChristian+anarchism.&qt=hot_subject
• LibaryThing has a tag for “Christian Anarchy” here: https://www.librarything.com/tag/christian+anarchy

What would you add to these lists? Do you have a favourite text in Christian Anarchism?

Libraries Visited in 2013

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Libraries

Here are some images of the libraries I worked in or visited in 2013.

 

War Memorial Library, Lower Hutt, NZ

 

Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, Wellington, NZ

 

New College Library, University of Edinburgh, UK

 

Edinburgh City Library, UK

 

National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK

 

Readers’ Desk, Ruskin Library, University of Lancaster, UK

 

Chetham’s Library, Manchester, UK

 

John Rylands Library, Manchester, UK

 

Quaker Library London, UK

 

LSE Library, London, UK

 

Boston Public Library, Boston, USA

 

AMBS Library, Elkhart, USA

 

Hewitson Library, Knox College, Dunedin, NZ

 

University of Otago Library, Dunedin, NZ

Three Cheers for “Two Cheers for Christian Anarchism”

I’ve just read the new book from James C. Scott – Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play. I enjoyed his previous work so much that I had to own this one. I can happily report that it is simply fantastic.

First of all the book has been beautifully designed. From the elegant cover  to the typography and page layout it is a gem. The only error seems to be that the Acknowledgements are incomplete. Secondly, the writing is brilliant, being both snappy and fun. The book consists of numerous “fragments”, examples from his life and experiences that illustrate his approach to looking at social problems and their solutions.

The overall thrust of the book is to encourage readers to develop an anarchist perspective to view the world, an anarchist political imagination, if you like. In this way he helps us to see our own fragments, and in doing so, Scott claims that we will be able see things more clearly than we otherwise would. He also encourages us to practice what he playfully calls “anarchist calisthenics”, by which he means regular (daily) acts of minor law-breaking so that when the situation arises for major disobedience, our rebellious muscles are exercised and ready.

Published by Princeton University Press: Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play

Books read in 2009

Here is a list of the 59 books I read in 2009 (although there are a few pages left on one or two, which should keep me busy for the next couple of days). This time last year I aimed to read a book related to my thesis each and every week for the year. I easily passed this target, but some books are quite short and easy reads, only taking a sitting or two. Others I reviewed for academic journals and required more attention. This list excludes books of which I only read part or a chapter, and of course journal articles aren’t listed.

It is interesting to look back and see how my reading has changed since the start of my PhD and also worrying what remains to be read and reread. There are over 100 items on my Amazon Wish List alone!

This is my list:

• Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception, trans. Kevin Attell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
• Hannah Arendt, On Violence (London: A Harvest/HBJ book, 1970).
• Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (London: Penguin, 2006).
• Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Cultural memory in the present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).
• Naim Stifan Ateek, Justice, and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1989).
• Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. Ray Brassier, Cultural Memory in the Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).
• Karl Barth and Johannes Hamel, How to Serve God in a Marxist Land (New York: Association Press, 1959).
• Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1977).
• Pope Benedict, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Trans?guration, 1st ed. in the U.S. (New York: Doubleday, 2007).
• Thomas Bohache, Christology from the Margins (London: SCM Press, 2008).
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 1–3, ed. Martin Ruter, Ilse Todt, and John W. de Gruchy, trans. Douglas Stephen Bax (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004).
• Martin Buber, Ich und du (Stuttgart: P. Reclam, 1995).
• Will D. Campbell and James Y. Holloway, Up to Our Steeples in Politics (New York: Paulist Press, 1970).
• Dante, Monarchy, ed. and trans. Pru Shaw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
• Jacques Ellul, The Politics of God and the Politics of Man, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972).
• Jacques Ellul, The New Demons (London & Oxford: Mowbrays, 1975).
• Jacques Ellul, Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation (New York: Seabury Press, 1977).
• Jacques Ellul, Perspectives on Our Age: Jacques Ellul Speaks on His Life and Work, ed. William H. Vanderburg, trans. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Seabury Press, 1981).
• Jacques Ellul, Money and Power (Basingstoke: Marshall Pickering, 1986).
• Jacques Ellul, Jesus and Marx: From Gospel to Ideology, trans. Joyce Main Hanks (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988).
• Jacques Ellul, Reason for Being: A Meditation on Ecclesiastes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990).
• Jacques Ellul, Sources and Trajectories: Eight Early Articles by Jacques Ellul That Set the Stage, trans. Marva J. Dawn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997).
• Jacques Ellul and Patrick Troude-Chastenet, Jacques Ellul on Religion, Technology, and Politics, trans. Joan Mendès France, South Florida-Rochester-Saint Louis Studies on Religion and the Social Order (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998).
• Danna Nolan Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty: Plotting Politics in the Book of Daniel, 2nd. ed., rev. and extended (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991).
• Duncan B. Forrester and Danus Skene, eds., Just Sharing: A Christian Approach to the Distribution of Wealth, Income and Bene?ts (London: Epworth, 1988).
• Robert C. Fuller, Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
• David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Paradigm 14 (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004), 105.
• S. L. Greenslade, The Church and the Social Order: A Historical Sketch (London: SCM Press, 1948).
• Barry Harvey, Can These Bones Live?: A Catholic Baptist Engagement with Ecclesiology, Hermeneutics, and Social Theory (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2008).
• Stanley Hauerwas and Romand Coles, Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary: Conversations Between a Radical Democrat and a Christian, Theopolitical Visions (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2008).
• Yoram Hazony, The Dawn: Political Teachings of the Book of Esther, Rev. ed. (Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2000).
• Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State (New York: Dover Publications, 1988).
• Nathan R. Kerr, Christ, History and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission (London: SCM Press, 2008).
• Peter Kropotkin, The State: Its Historic Role, Revised, trans. Vernon Richards and Freedom Press, Anarchist Classics (London: Freedom, 1987).
• Hans Küng, Was ich glaube (München: Piper, 2009).
• Mark Lilla, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (New York: Vintage Books, 2008).
• Daniel S. Malachuk, Perfection, the State, and Victorian Liberalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
• Pierre Manent, A World beyond Politics?: A Defense of the Nation-State, trans. Marc LePain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
• J. Gordon McConville, God and Earthly Power: An Old Testament Political Theology, Genesis–Kings (London: T&T Clark, 2006).
• Bernard McGinn, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).
• J. Richard Middleton, The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2005).
• John Milbank, The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005).
• John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, 2nd ed (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).
• John Milbank, The Future of Love: Essays in Political Theology (London: SCM Press, 2009).
• Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society (London: Quartet Books, 1973).
• Scott R. Paeth, Exodus Church and Civil Society: Public Theology and Social Theory in the Work of Jürgen Moltmann (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).
• Gianfranco Poggi, The Development of the Modern State: A Sociological Introduction (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1978).
• Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Jürgen Habermas, Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion, ed., with a foreword by Florian Schuller, trans. Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006).
• John H. Redekop, Politics Under God (Waterloo: Herald Press, 2007).
• Rosemary Radford Ruether and Marion Grau, eds., Interpreting the Postmodern: Responses to “Radical Orthodoxy” (New York: T & T Clark, 2006).
• Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. George Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
• Juliet B. Schor, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need (New York: HarperPerennial, 1999).
• Hagen Schulze, States, Nations and Nationalism: From the Middle Ages to the Present (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).
• Martin Sicker, Reading Genesis Politically: An Introduction to Mosaic Political Philosophy (Westport: Praeger, 2002).
• William Stringfellow, An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (Waco: Word Books, 1973).
• Peter Stuhlmacher, Historical Criticism and Theological Interpretation of Scripture, trans. Roy A. Harrisville (London: S.P.C.K. 1979).
• Jason E. Vickers, Invocation and Assent: The Making and Remaking of Trinitarian Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).
• Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1985).
• Tripp York, Living on Hope While Living in Babylon: The Christian Anarchists of the Twentieth Century (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2009).

Technical Note: This list was created from BibDesk using a custom export template. The .txt file was saved as .tex and then run through TexShop to produce a PDF, which was exported to Word, then an Apple script replaced the italics with the matching HTML tags. Cool huh!

A Moral Climate

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=r06c-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=1570757119&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr&npa=1From Prof. Michael S. Northcott, my other supervisor, comes a new book on climate change.

Here is a talk from Michael on “Clouds of Witness: Lying, Truth Telling and Climate Change”.

Climate Change Book a Challenging Read

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=r06c-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=1856075621&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr&npa=1Over the weekend I read Climate Change: The Challenge to All of Us by Sean McDonagh. Theological treatments of the issue of climate change are rare so I was pleased to pick this up (with 20% discount too). Unfortunately I cannot recommend this book. It was clearly put together in haste – perhaps in the rush to capitalize on the soaring public interest. One gripe is the over reliance on newspaper articles as sources. One could just as easily read the papers oneself or subscribe to a decent RSS feed on climate change for news about new research into the science and likely impacts of climate change. The footnoting is terrible in places and the number of spelling mistakes is unforgivable. While the book is directed at us all it is really for the Irish and especially Irish Catholics. If you aren’t one, don’t bother.

The Secular State and Anarchism

Recent reads include:

• The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State
• Anarchism: A Beginner’s Guide (Oneworld Beginners’ Guides)

Anarchism is an average introduction to the ideology of anarchism. It main strength is also its main weakness – the weaving together of contemporary thinkers with the fathers of Anarchism. I was thankful for some leads for my thesis – especially those promoting some reflections on doctrine of humanity and the view of human nature that underpins various political ideologies. Anarchism still has much to teach us about us the underlying assumptions of liberalism and capitalism.

The Godless Constitution is a polemical work targeting those who claim America as a Christian Country. Using historical evidence they try to demolish the argument that America was founded as a Christian nation. On the face of it they seem pretty convincing, but the authors do not address directly those who would claim otherwise. While this is not the scope of the book, not doing so leaves some doubt about the other sides of the argument. Nevertheless it is worth reading, and made me wonder if such explicit statements exist about the secular founding of New Zealand. Historians in this part seem more focused on the evidence of a bi-cultural country, than a religious or secular one.

I’m currently reading Kathryn Tanner’s The Politics of God: Christian Theologies and Social Justice in preparation for the Christian Salvation Conference here at Otago University next week. I have set up a book shop for the Salvation Conference (Otago July 2007) with the books of the two keynote speakers.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=r06c-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0800626133&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr&npa=1http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=r06c-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0393328376&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr&npa=1http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=r06c-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=1851683704&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

Race, Neighborhoods, and the Misuse of Social Capital

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=r06c-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=1403980764&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr&nou=1I have a chapter in a new book Race, Neighborhoods, and the Misuse of Social Capital, edited by James Jennings (published by Palgrave Macmillan). My chapter is called ‘Social Capital and Strong Communities in New Zealand‘. What the blurb says:

This anthology tackles four key issues in race, neighborhoods, and social capital: how is social capital discussed within the contexts of racial inequality, how does this dialogue inform public policy regarding neighborhood revitalization and economic development, and how is utilization of social capital an effective strategy for improving inner city living conditions. These accomplished authors first address the common argument and then provide illustrative analyses, articulating political and economic strategies that ensure basic economic benefits for all communities, regardless of the “stock” of social capital.

Recent Reads

I finished two short books in the last few days.

Body Politics by John Howard Yoder is a brief, yet powerful study of five practices (he’d like to call them all sacraments) that the church has which have political import: baptism, Eucharist, dispute resolution, decision-making and the multiplicity of gifts. It’s good stuff and it’s easy to see why Stanley Hauerwas holds Yoder in such high regard. Both Yoder and Hauerwas see the church forming people through its own practices and this having an impact on the watching world. Yoder sees these sacraments as political and not just individual acts, affecting the community, not just the individual believer. A highly recommended book.

The other book was Sharing Gods Planet: A Christian Vision for a Sustainable Future from the Church of England. Sadly I can’t rate this very highly. It is not very good either on theology or the practical responses to what we can do about the environment. To do both in a short publication is difficult, but as Yoder has shown in Body Politics, with skill sometimes less is more.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=r06c-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0836191609&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr&npa=1http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=r06c-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=071514068X&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr&npa=1

Where is the Spirit?

I’m on the Presbyterian Church’s environmental taskforce, which has the role to address environmental issues and how the Church can respond at both the Assembly and parish levels. To contribute to that end I’m reengaging with some eco-theological literature.

First on the list is Dorothee Sölle‘s To Work and To Love: A Theology of Creation. It is a bit dated, being written in 1984, notably before the fall of the Soviet Empire (she praises Yugoslavia). One thing that struck me is her reflection on the absence of the Father God in German theology and the emphasis on Christ, notable in Dietrich Bonhoeffer. She blames this focus on the rejection of the “father” motif given the strong man image in Fascism. The shift to Christ was a reaction of that. I have written about sociomorphism before, this being the idea that the form of our society influences how we view God, but hadn’t thought until now that it might apply to the Trinity. But of course it makes perfect sense that how we view spirits, father and sons will influence how we view the Spirit, Father and Son (to use the traditional language of the Trinity).

But where is the Holy Spirit in refocus on Christ? It doesn’t appear, with the re-emergence of Trinity being a more recent phenomenon. Without the Spirit Soelle struggles with how God, who is supposed to be transcendent relates to the world. This is a weakness of the book and a strength of more recent trinitarian theologies of creation, where the full Trinity relates to creation, as Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer.