Anarchism at Christmas

As a follow up to my last post, A few thoughts on why I see Christmas as anarchistic. It might help to explain Christian Anarchism better.

When the wise men came to visit, they first went to Herod, because they assumed that a person of importance would be born there. They were wrong. Jesus was born in an animal shed, not in a royal palace, not in the temple. He rejected the trappings of power and religion, to just get born. And his first visitors were not powerful or "important" people, but shepherds, a group who were socially discriminated against, not least because they were dirty and smelly. Of course, being born in an animal shed meant that this was not very noticeable.

The thing is, in his birth, he rejected the system, the hierarchy, he circumvented the powers that ruled in the land. At this point, he did not confront them directly, but simply said that they were unnecessary. That is anarchism in action.

 As he grew up, he followed the Jewish law, he was circumcised and had his Bar Mitzvah. But when he was left behind in Jerusalem, he was teaching the religious leaders! He was not just prepared to accept the things that they had to say, but challenged them and discussed with them.

Through his teaching years, he was constantly challenging the "established position", saying "you have heard ..... but I say......." taking the Jewish message back to the original concept of a relationship with God. His most common outbursts were against the religious leadership, who he denounced as being "irrelevant", because people could have a relationship with God without them. The one time when we see Jesus acting aggressively is in the temple, but once again saying "all of this is not needed". In fact, it got in the way of the place being a house of prayer.

And in the end, the religious leaders got rid of him because he was challenging their power system. He told people that the religious establishment was not needed, and so the religious establishment had him killed. Today, the religious establishment is not needed, but those who say so get sidelined. What the church needs is not more courses, more vision, more programs, more stuff. What the church needs is less of itself, less system, and just let people get on with it in their own way.

Saying so is the heart of Christian Anarchism. This is only one partial interpretation of the life and story of Jesus - you may not agree, and there are many other interpretations. My only point is that the Christmas story, for all of its retelling in schools and churches across the world, is a very anti-establishment story.