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January 6, 1912—May 19, 1994

Peaceful Anarchist

Born in Bordeaux, Ellul converted to Christianity at age twenty-two. He was a leader in the French Resistance in World War II, and, despite being greatly influenced by Marx’s Das Kapital at age sixteen (and later by theologian Karl Barth, the “second great element” of his intellectual life), Ellul maintained that Christianity and anarchism are neither ideologically nor socially incompatible. “Biblical thinking,” he argued, beginning with the Hebrew Scriptures, is intensely anarchist. Ellul believed that Jesus’ teaching on the relationship between the Divine and the state has been skewed by the institutional church in order to wield power within the state, thereby stymieing real peace and true cooperation between people.

In 1937, Ellul married Yvette while serving as Director of Studies at the University of Strasbourg. In 1940, after his father was arrested and killed by the Nazis for being a “foreigner,” Ellul fled with his Holland-born wife before she could suffer the same fate. For the next four years, the two lived a meager existence in the countryside while helping the French Resistance.

In 1944, Ellul became deputy mayor of Bordeaux and also served on the National Synod of the Reformed Church of France. Both these endeavors led him to become disillusioned and critical of both political and religious institutions.

Ellul was especially wary of technological advances, warning that technology in modern society is suspect if it becomes a vehicle for the mass media propaganda that serves to legitimate the sacrality of the state and thus acts as a means of manipulation and control. Ellul wrote, “When I say that I ‘despise technology’ . . . it is not technology per se, but the authoritarian power that the ‘technocrats’ seek to exercise, as well as the fact that technology determines our lives without our being able to intervene or, as yet, control it.”

Ellul dedicated himself to writing philosophical and theological works on Christianity and anarchy. His anarchy, which he argued was modeled on Jesus’ social teachings, specifically championed non-domination as opposed to disorder.

A sympathetic commentator once remarked that Ellul’s sharp criticisms of the politics of modern society made him like the child who “blurted out that the emperor has no clothes.” The “prophet of Bordeaux,” as his admirers called him, died in Pessac, France. Thanks to his work, we’re more attuned to invisibly oppressive structures that stifle freedom and foster violence.