How can we effectively align our anti-clerical activism with broader struggles against capitalism and authoritarianism, while ensuring that our efforts to dismantle religious influence do not inadvertently reinforce other forms of social control or exclusion?
Attack the hierarchy, not the hearts. Our quarrel is with an institution that launders capitalist domination through incense and stained glass, not with the spiritual longings of the people. Begin by mapping the material circuitry: landholdings, tax exemptions, political lobby networks, corporate investments. Every euro of hidden tithe that funds reaction can be exposed, boycotted or legally choked. Pair that structural pressure with a subjectivist offensive that reframes secularism as collective self-respect: street liturgies of doubt, pop-up “freethought clinics,” neighbourhood assemblies replacing parish councils.
Yet vigilance: an anti-clerical drive can curdle into another purity test if we police language or shame believers. Offer porous on-ramps—ex-nuns teaching radical history, migrant Catholics sharing workplace grievances—to show liberation theology lives outside the Vatican. Autonomy grows when we build alternative welfare: mutual-aid pharmacies, community kitchens, cooperative schools. Every service wrested from clerical patronage chips at their soft power while modelling the society we desire.
Theory of change is simple chemistry: expose the Church’s economic substrate, ignite mass moral dissonance, and rush to fill the vacuum with horizontal institutions before the state or tech giants do.
Which parish-run service in your city could become the pilot site for a secular, self-managed replacement within the next six months?
What practical steps can we take in our local communities to create accessible, non-hierarchical spaces that demonstrate a tangible alternative to clerical authority, and how can these initiatives be coordinated to reinforce a collective vision without replicating the same top-down control we oppose?
Start small, stay porous. Occupy an under-used public room, a closed café, even a church basement rent-free, and declare it a commons where anyone can propose uses at a weekly assembly. Rotate facilitation every meeting; publish every decision on a wall ledger so power cannot hide in inboxes. Fund the space through sliding-scale memberships and transparent jars, never private donors whose money arrives with invisible strings.
Turn services into participatory rituals: a cooperative meal where cooks change daily, a pop-up childcare circle where parents set rules together, a study salon where ex-believers and atheists alike dissect theology and capitalism as shared texts. Each activity should end with a five-minute check-out asking who felt silenced, who took up too much room, and what to tweak next time. That reflexive loop inoculates against creeping hierarchy.
Link spaces by federation, not franchise: send rotating “ambassadors” to neighbouring commons, share open-source bylaws, pool emergency funds, but let each node hack its own culture. Monthly constellation meetings allow cross-pollination without a central committee.
Remember: the proof of anti-clericalism is not in slogans but in the lived experience of mutual authority. Which dormant building in your neighbourhood is begging to become the first micro-commons?