notes on a radical pamphlet #4: God’s Hit List edited by Chaz Bufe

During my time browsing bookshops and galleries and other cultural spaces, I have acquired many short texts positing radical ideas (or ideas that have at least been considered radical at some point or in some contexts) and now, older than Christ and living devoid of any meaning, community, energy or value, I’ve decided to slowly read my way through this stack of strange bits of intentionally provocative paper... This is an occasional series.

Chaz Bufe, welcome back… Welcome back, Chaz Bufe.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mister (uncertain) Chaz Bufe!

I know nothing about Chaz Bufe, even though I have now read two publications with that name on the cover.

The meaning of this statement isn’t that I “research” (ewww imagine doing that) the writers of every book I read (maybe when I’ve read like five or six or something, or if the author bio is the best bit of the whole book?) and that I either couldn’t be arsed to do it this time or that Bufe is an enigma, a mystery, a nobody who lives in the wind (though maybe they are?), but is instead a comment on the anonymous-adjacent practices of the radical pamphleteering scene.

No bio here! No detail!

Chaz Bufe could be a child or as old as Time, they could be a professor, a doctor, a baker, a police officer (tho probably not that); Chaz Bufe could be in jail for mass murder, Chaz Bufe could be a care worker, a midwife, a nurse…

Chaz Bufe could be anything at all, above and beyond and including the one confirmed detail I know about Chaz Bufe: Chaz Bufe is a radical pamphleteer with an interest in the erosion of and diminishment of the power currently exhibited in the United States of America (yes, that place again!) by the Christian church…

In a previous entry to this “excellent occasional series” (scott manley hadley), I explored Bufe’s pamphlet that lists reasons why people must abandon Christianity. This one, tho not called that and not offering a list of reasons per se (I don’t know what “per se” means but it sounds right in that spot (I think?)), it instead focuses on one reason to abandon Christianity and explores it with examples taken from what many Christians consider to be their “bible”, the book known as The Bible, specifically here the King James Version, the only version of the Bible in English I’ve known anyone to mention without sneering at, which is probably a very very bad sign and a real issue for actual scholarship and literary analysis – someone should probably publish a contemporary literary translation that doesn’t bear the marks of the grubby, cash and blood-stained hands of the [insert slurs as strong and patronising as you’re willing to go] adherents of a 2,000 year old millenarian cult. Imo.

I think Bufe would agree with me here – Bufe does seem to have a relationship with and an interest in The Bible as literature, as a text (at least).

Bufe does not pretend that infamous book doesn’t exist – by drawing attention to its hypocrisy, its ridiculousness and inconsistencies, he very effectively draws attention to the hypocrisies, ridiculousness and inconsistencies of the bizarre and often very fucking bad people who claim to live by it. In America. (I’m writing this on the 4th July, America’s big festival, so America is on the brain.)

This pamphlet, then, is the – surprisingly short! – selection of (supposedly) all of the instances in the King James Version when an act or a thing or a person is referred to as an abomination, and every time an act or a thing or a person is deemed to be deserving of immediate execution.

Most of the excerpts are from the famously bolshy Pentateuch, but there is lots included from beyond that, too, tho not very much from the New Testament, as the whole point of the Gospels, right, is that forgiveness and redemption are possible, and also that God is relatable and human now, rather than magical and vengeful and capricious and mean. Or something like that.

For what, then, does the Bible demand death as penance? It’s a bit more like for what doesn’t the Bible demand death as penance, ammaright???

This isn’t as electrifying or urgent as some of the other radical pamphlets in my stack of radical pamphlets, but it has a simple purpose and it makes its point clearly and with textual evidence: The Bible is not something to live by, it is an ancient, strange, text and it is full of contradiction and oversimplification, but – and this is the thing you miss if you only look at it for discussion of the divinity of God (whatever that is) – it’s also full of poetry and adventure and narrative and fun.

It’s a library, not a guide to life.

Thank you, Chaz Bufe – who I will now Google but won’t tell you about unless I discover something shocking – for another pleasing radical pamphlet.

More radical pamphlets soon!!!

(oh and Chaz Bufe is credited as a cowriter of The Anarchist Cookbook lol so yeah probably should have googled him earlier 🤪🤪🤪)

God’s Hit List: Abominations and Death Penalties in the Bible can be ordered from the AK Press website and probably other places, too.