Anarchism and Religious Freedom
Anarchism advocates the defence of individual liberties, first and foremost the freedom from need and the freedom of thought. So they cannot but defend the religious freedom of the individual.
Every man or woman who remains bound by religious ties creates a problem for the whole community. It is one which cannot be solved through an authoritarian act, but only by making an effort to create the conditions which make it necessary in the first place for someone to bind themselves in this way. Having done this, at least partly, there are still margins of individual freedom which mean it is impossible to forbid someone from believing in any religion. The only limit on this freedom of belief can be the freedom of others. In a society which is composed of free and equal members, the defence of individual religious freedom cannot be subject to different rules than those which defend other freedoms. For anarchism, there are and there can be no particular rights regarding the defence of personal religious feeling, other than those which exist anyway within a society that assures the maximum freedom possible. For anarchism, any form of particular arrangement or "concordat", any differentiation of status for religious reasons, would be unthinkable and this places anarchism firmly in contrast with any form of theocratic management of society.
This conception of personal religious freedom is part and parcel of a project for the construction of a new system of values which is in constant evolution, which can always be improved, which is always ready for dialectic confrontation and for the creation of better living conditions for all within the framework of solidarity and equality on a world-wide level. Anarchism contains the awareness that the path towards an anarchist society is a continuous approximation, a tendential process which is characterized by a dialectic between men and women, both as individuals and as in their associations. With regard to its action, anarchism keeps account of the needs and requirements which arise from society, but in order to be able to do this, free from any conditioning due to a failure to meet the material needs and from the power which derives from the possession of the means of production, it foresees the revolutionary act of suppressing private property and the introduction of a revolutionary political process, as both a beginning and end point of the process of transformation, nourished and supported by the constant growth of the class struggle.
[5th Congress of the FdCA - Florence, 1997]
from Alternativa Libertaria - April 2005
News-sheet of the Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici
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