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Now that Christianity is no longer dominant in society, it is a stupid mania on the part of Christians to cling to this or that ideology and to abandon that which embarrasses them in Christianity. Thus many Christians turned to Stalinist communism after 1945. They emphasized whatever Christianity has to say about the poor, about social justice, about the attempt to change society, and neglected what they found uncomfortable -the proclamation of the sovereignty of God and of salvation in Jesus Christ. In the 1970s we saw the same tendency in the so-called liberation theologies. In an extreme form a strategy has been found to make possible association with (South American) revolutionary movements. A poor person of any kind is supposedly identical with Jesus Christ. Hence there is no problem. As for the event two thousand years ago, little attention is paid to it. These orientations were broadly preceded by that of rationalistic Protestantism around 1900 with its simple presupposition that since science is always right, and has the truth, then in preserving the Bible and the gospel we must abandon everything that is contrary to science and reason, for example, the possibility that God incarnated himself in a man, along with the miracles, the resurrection, etc. Finally, in our own time we again find the same attitude of conciliation by abandonment of one part of Christianity, but this time in favor of Islam. (Anarchy, 4)Real faith in the gospel cannot serve some other aims or ideology.
All the churches have scrupulously respected and often supported the state authorities. They have made of conformity a major virtue. They have tolerated social injustices and the exploitation of some people by others, explaining that it is God's will that some should be masters and others servants, and that socioeconomic success is an outward sign of divine blessing. They have thus transformed the free and liberating Word into morality, the most astonishing thing being that there can be no Christian morality if we truly follow evangelical thinking. The fact is that it is much easier to judge faults according to an established morality than to view people as living wholes and to understand why they act as they do. (Anarchy, 5)
...pacifist, antinationalist, anticapitalist, moral, and antidemocratic anarchism (i.e., that which is hostile to the falsified democracy of bourgeois states). There remains the anarchism which acts by means of persuasion, by the creation of small groups and networks, denouncing falsehood and oppression, aiming at a true overturning of authorities of all kinds as people at the bottom speak and organize themselves. All this is very close to Bakunin. (Anarchy, 12f.)Later on, Ellul takes this in what looks to me like a very libertarian direction (the vaccination example on pp. 14f.). He complains about "the omnipresence of the state" (Anarchy, 15). "It is essential that we lodge objections to everything." (Anarchy, 15) This is a thoroughgoing anarchism, which refuses to receive anything from the government. This seems to me to expect too much from this age. We can take the basic standpoint to the government here, that we should not expect anything good from it, but can also let it be to some extent, to surrender some freedom, always with an eye to where an issue of obeying God rather than Caesar comes along. Jesus paid the temple tax even though he was free.
To vote is to take part in the organization of the false democracy that has been set up forcefully by the middle class. No matter whether one votes for the left or the right, the situation is the same. Again, to organize a party is necessarily to adopt a hierarchical structure and to wish to have a share in the exercise of power. (Anarchy, 13)The condemnation of the "wish to have a share in the exercise of power" can be drawn quite obviously from Jesus' teachings. But it also is a logical part of any true anarchism. The point is always to destroy power. The reminder needs to be constant because human nature goes so strongly against it.
The political game can produce no important changes in our society and we must radically refuse to take part in it. Society is far too complex. Interests and structures are far too closely integrated into one another. We cannot hope to modify them by the political path. The example of multinationals is enough to show this. (Anarchy, 13)