What pirates do, as a rule, is emerge from the underbelly of a ‘stuck’ orthodoxy and, by way of actions that are initially perceived as heretical, reinvigorate that practice. The heresy of Napster becomes the orthodoxy of Spotify. The pirate DJs of Radio Caroline join Aunty at the BBC and create Radio 1.

And this is what Jesus did. He saw a religion blocked – a temple which had access restricted by merchants and priests. And he set about plundering the booty in the temple, and setting it free for all to enjoy. This was the heresy of Jesus Christ. And this is the orthodoxy that we should be preaching.

But, so many years later, the empire has taken the reins of faith again, and the authorities have pooled their wealth in guarded palaces. Where are the pirates now? Who will opt for this short but merry life, and raise a skull and crossed-bones against the greedy princes and enslaving merchants who reap huge rewards for unjust and unfair practice? Who will dare sail for freedom, out of the shadows of the church, and taste the exotic on the high seas?

So here’s my plea: our faith is always under threat from blockage, from those who would control access to forgiveness, to grace, to truth. We need good Christian pirates to plunder and raid these places, to demand that these goods are released for all.

And this, for all its failings, is what may be seen as the last effect of the emerging church: a series of heretical, piratical actions that sought, through the short but merry life of various groups, to show that this faith of ours is ‘more than a grimace.’ We have seen this blocked orthodoxy, and through our heresies want to see it revitalised, if we don’t hang for it first.

These leaves just two questions to answer:

1) what should we make of modern day piracy such as that we see in Somalia and in the European Parliament with the Swedish Pirate Party.

2) why is it that children are so fascinated with pirates?

And with a look at Peter Pan, I hope we can answer that in the final post. Hope you’ve enjoyed the series so far.

Captain Mission’s capture of a Dutch slaver, and his demand that those who claimed an enlightened view of God should have a more enlightened view of the whole of humanity, can be seen as a signifier of a more general pattern in piracy.

Nic has wanted to argue in the comments that piracy is simply a symptom of the hegemony of capitalism, and that as a dependent it therefore does nothing to critique it. I’d argue more positively: piracy does spring inevitably from capitalism, but as a valid and robust critique of it. Pirates are born from the detritus of the merchant and ruling classes – and come back to bite them.

The pattern we see emerging is this: when a society or religion gets ‘stuck’ and begins to over-control access to ‘vital’ resources, pirates will always emerge to work some thievery and unblock the flow. This unblocking, initially condemned as heresy by the establishment, is later embraced as orthodoxy.

Mission’s freeing of slaves is one example. It was only later that the West began to see that slavery was wrong, but pirates had opened up the channel of this heresy, and thus it began to infect orthodox thought, and eventually changed it. But other examples follow the exact same pattern: the heresy of Napster – music for free – has been embraced as the orthodoxy of Spotify. They are virtually the same product. Music was ‘blocked’ by lazy record companies and artists’ multi-album deals, pumping out boring compilations. Now the whole industry has been given a huge kick up the backside, and many many more artists are free to let their music out into the flow.

In the 60′s, pirate radio stations began to appear off the coast of the UK playing new-fangled ‘pop’ music. The government passed legislation to try to ban these pirates, but it was always going to be in vain: the heresy of this new music was eventually embraced as orthodoxy with the creation of BBC Radio 1 – with shows hosted by the very pirate DJs who had been criminalised.

So, as we look back and see the vilified pirates, strung up on gillets by the Thames, condemned for their heresy and sedition in the shadow of St Paul’s cathedral… do we not see something in the spirit of the crowds who gathered, who saw in these heretics the promise of a life more free and true? Do we not look back and see another man, condemned as a heretic and strung up by the authorities, and wonder if this short but merry pirate life that he led had something more to say to us than the dour message of obedience to authority that the stiff-shirted clerics of the stone-piled cathedrals preached?

I believe we should, and it’s to this pirate faith that we’ll turn in the next post.

Pirates are so hated by corporations because they represent a critique of the capitalist establishment, an insurrection by those who have been marginalised by the supertanker of economic growth and greed. It is well known that pirates robbed ships and made off with booty. What is less well known is their attacking of slave ships, freeing those who were being transported to forced labour in the New World.

One mythic Captain Mission captured a Dutch slaver off the coast of Africa, and his speech to the crew of that boat was recorded (put on your best pirate accent):

‘The Trading for those of our Species cou’d never be agreeable to the Eyes of divine Justice and no Man has the Power of the Liberty of another; and while those who profess a more enlightened Knowledge of the Deity, sold men like Beasts; they prov’d that their Religion was no more than a Grimace!‘

What this highlights so well is the connection between the pirates’ rejection of the emerging capitalism in the empire-building west, and the rejection of the empirical Christianity that went with it. In this way, we can see the pirate critique of this powerful society as not simply social resistance, but also as heresy.

Lamborn Wilson, in Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs and European Renegadoes sees heresy as a means of cultural transfer. The example he uses is of the co-evolution of Celtic Christianity and Druidry – once they had interfaced with one another there was transfer between them. Christianity was never quite the same, and neither was druidry:

“When a religion from one culture penetrates another culture, it frequently does so as “heresy”; only later do the Orthodox Authorities arrive to straighten everyone out…”

But the problem is that even when the orthodox authorities – or British navy – do arrive to sort everyone out, the damage has been done. Good, pure Christianity has been infected by druidry, and good upstanding colonies have been infected by the pirate spirit.

The key point for us here though is the vector of that heresy, because it is precisely Captain Mission’s heretical view of Christianity as a religion that ought to respect human rights universally that has become the orthodox view. And this is what we’ll explore in the next post: how pirates offer a heretical view of a ‘stuck’ orthodoxy that points the way towards a renewal of what orthodoxy should mean.