A good link to reading material on Christian Anarchy... (although I don't agree with all of it)
http://www.hccentral.com/eller12/
I took a peek at the begining where I presumed Vernard Eller would define his terms. I was pleasantly surprised to see this:
For us, then, "arky" identifies any principle of governance claiming to be of primal value for society. "Government" (that which is determined to govern human action and events) is a good synonym--as long as we are clear, that political arkys are far from being the only "governments" around. Not at all; churches, schools, philosophies, social standards, peer pressures, fads and fashions, advertising, planning techniques, psychological and sociological theories--all are arkys out to govern us.
But then he makes the fatal mistake of swallowing whole, a variation of the statist premise that poisons our language to favor statism and discredit the free market. This premise is that the only possible form of government is the state.
Since it's clear from the quote above that he understands this to be false, a reasonable person would think that he would then reject the state in favor these other forms of government, with the proviso that they govern strictly in accordance with voluntary consent. But no! Instead he insists that voluntary consent is impossible; that all businesses and organizations in the market, even philosophies and theories, gain their influence through
imposition. This sounds all too much like the communists and socialists claim that people are slaves to the free market, or that freedom is slavery.
Obviously, the idea of "power" goes hand in hand with "arky"; the two are inseparable. Indeed, every time Paul uses "arky" in the sense of "principalities," he couples it with one of the Greek "power" words. Yet regarding both "power" and "arky" we must make a crucial specification: we are always supposing a power or a government that is imposed upon its constituency. It is, of course, proper to speak of, say, "the power of love." Yet this is power in an entirely different sense of the word in that it carries no hint of imposition at all. Looking only at the phrase itself; "the kingdom of God" would appear to be an "arky" no different from the others. Yet we will come to see that this is not so. When Jesus said "My kingdom is not of this world," he was saying that, although all worldly arkys have to be impositional, his is radically different in that it does not have to be--and in fact is not.
And the following is the most damning of all:
Consequently, for secular anarchists the solution is "autonomy"--the self being a law unto itself (which is what we customarily have understood "anarchy" to be). However, Christianity contends that autonomy is simply another form of heteronomy, that to use my own self-image as the arky governing myself is actually to impose a heteronomous arky upon me. The assumption that I am the one who best knows myself and knows what is best for myself is to forget that I am a creature (a sinful creature, even) and that there is a Creator who, being my Creator (and also being somewhat smarter than I am), knows me much better than I ever can know myself.
Amazingly, he is truly an anarchist, even by my understanding of the word "anarchy", with which he clearly agrees. To do so, though, he rejects self ownership as the tyranny of the self over the "virtue" of unthinking, abject submission to God's rules, as set forth, I presume, in a book.
Sure, I can "govern" myself. Together I can associate with a like-minded group to accomplish a stated task (contract). If this is what you are calling "government" then certainly one can freely make contract with others to the benefit of all involved. This is not what I am referring to as the fiction and I think you know that.
Actually; my understanding of "government" is identical to that of Vernard Eller. There are all kinds of government. What may have you confused is the idea of civil government, as opposed to the government of a manufacturing company or the government of a sports league. What you fail to grasp is that there is no reason that an agency of civil government cannot be operated as any other enterprise that competes for clients and employees with other similar enterprises in a free market.
The "fiction" is this pie-in-the-sky idea that some "thing" called the "USA" (or insert your favorite fiction here) has a LEGITIMATE authority to force me into anything. I did not contract for any benefit nor obligation to this fiction and neither did you. There are certainly a bunch of men with guns who BELIEVE that there is some obligation for me to perform some function (like pay taxes) and they are willing to hurt me if I don't, but that does not make them legitimate, it only makes them thugs...
Yes. One fiction is that the state is legitimate, by any standard other than the state's own arbitrary decree.
The bigger fiction is that the state is the only possible model for government and, hence, a necessary evil. There is no such thing as a necessary evil.
In a voluntaryist society you are not required to consent to any kind of contract or organization. You can live as a hermit if you wish, but you will have to defend your rights against people or organizations that can easily overwhelm you in a dispute.
Which is why I can contract with like minded individuals to provide a means of protection.
If you have agreed for your involvement with this organization to be governed by the rules of this contract, assuming the contract forbids the use of aggressive force or coercion, then you are involved with voluntary civil government.