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White Crow Books Ltd The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Tolstoy
Published in 1884 The kingdom of God is within you is perhaps Tolstoys most significant work of nonfiction. Due to the Russian censors it was first published in Germany but its dominant idea of nonviolence echoed across the international stage throughout the 20th century. In essence the book is a defence by Tolstoy of the position on nonviolence he adopted in My Religion; and therefore also an assault on the Orthodox Church. Nowhere says Tolstoy is there evidence that God or Christ founded anything like what churchmen understand by the Church. And in what it now proclaimed Tolstoy believed the church was wasting its time: The activity of the church consists in forcing by every means in its power upon millions Russian people those antiquated timeworn beliefs which have lost all significance. Freshly informed by Quaker ideals of nonviolence; and full of both story telling and rhetoric here is Tolstoy calling for a change in consciousness in society. He does not accept that this social order with its pauperism famines prisons gallows armies and wars is necessary to society. That which is is not that which must be. Rooted in the Sermon on the Mount Tolstoys Christianity is not primarily concerned with worship or salvation but with a new way of behaving in society behaviour informed by the pointlessness and sin of violence. Tolstoy tellingly reflects on the army at work whether in internal repression or in national wars and asks: How can you kill people when it is written in Gods commandment Thou shall not murder? Gandhi was overwhelmed by the book said it left an abiding impression and in time a correspondence started between the two men. The book convinced Gandhi that Hinduism and Christianity were one and the same at their core and informed his passive resistance first in South Africa and then India; and later of course that of Martin Luther King in the USAshow more