66 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1
but also the moral implications of such transformations, which are
seen as configuring a deviation from Simão Toko’s preaching, thus
implying a corruption of the egalitarian and mutualist principles.
Conclusion: liberation and freedom in Christian cultures
The apparent opposition between anarchism and religion has
been historically construed as an irreconcilable one, especially
considering the comments set forth by Mikhail Bakunin on the
tyranny and coercion of theology and the idea of God as ‘phan-
tom’, against the conviction of the intrinsic freedom of man.^44
Bakunin, who is seen as one of the most influential figures of an-
archist thought, was also a self-proclaimed anti-theologian who
deconstructed the ‘absurd tales’ of the doctrines extracted from
the Bible in the history of Christian thought.^45 However, one
could also argue that Bakunin’s critique was ultimately directed
not to the Bible or the idea of God per se, but rather to the pos-
terior political construction that reduced, through control and
exploitation, believers and citizens to ignorance and intellectual
reduction.^46 From this perspective, throughout most of anarchist
thought, church and state were the same agents of exploitation –
and thus the anarchist aspiration of ‘abolishment’ must concern
extrinsic government and God alike. This classic positioning, as
Paul-François Tremlett has pointed out, has historically placed the
debate of religion in anarchist thought into the fringes.^47
However, as several authors mentioned in this chapter point
out, the contradiction only emerges in the process of political ex-
egesis and translation into religious institution; and in fact, both
religion and anarchism share, more often than not, a utopian am-
bition. Thus, the problem with the debate was not so much the
lack of ability (or will) to surpass the epistemological conundrum
between God and anarchism, but instead perhaps a concentra-
tion of understanding of ‘religion’ as ‘institution’ on behalf of
particular strands of anarchist thought and the consequent lack
of interest in surveying the implications of religious experience
in the believers, both in spiritual and political terms. Likewise, a
similar position has been assumed on behalf of a clear majority of
theologians who refused to accept the possibility of an anarchist