Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is seen by many Christians as a moving summary of his message to the community of Christian disciples. For Christian anarchist thinkers like Tolstoy, Ellul, Elliott, and Andrews among others, it also contains Jesus’ most poignant statement on violence – his call to turn the other cheek – a statement which, they argue, cannot but ultimately imply a condemnation of the state for its theoretical and practical monopoly over the allegedly legitimate use of
violence. This paper offers an overview of this radical political exegesis, thus showing why, for Christian anarchists, the very core of Christianity cannot but imply a form of (non-violent) anarchism.
History
School
Social Sciences
Department
Politics and International Studies
Published in
Law, Morality and Politics: Global Perspectives on Violence and the State
Pages
19 - 26
Citation
CHRISTOYANNOPOULOS, A.J.M.E., 2010. A Christian anarchist critique of violence: From turning the other cheek to a rejection of the state. IN: King, S., Salzani, C. and Staley, O. (eds.) Law, Morality and Politics: Global Perspectives on Violence and the State, Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, pp. 19-26.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Publication date
2010
Notes
This book chapter originally appeared in
King, S., Salzani, C. and Staley, O. (eds.) Law, Morality and Politics: Global Perspectives on Violence and the State, in 2010, first published by the Inter-Disciplinary Press".