The Kingdom of God Is Within You
ISBN 1603863826 | | |
Text | The Kingdom of God Is Within You at Wikisource |
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The Kingdom of God Is Within You (
The Kingdom of God Is Within You is a key text for
Background
The title of the book originates from
"How can you kill people, when it is written in God's commandment: 'Thou shalt not murder'?"
Tolstoy was largely inspired by the writings of American Christian anarchists
Tolstoy advocated
Nowhere nor in anything, except in the assertion of the Church, can we find that God or Christ founded anything like what churchmen understand by the Church.
Tolstoy presented excerpts from magazines and newspapers relating various personal experiences, and gave keen insight into the history of non-resistance from the very foundation of Christianity, as being professed by a minority of believers. In particular, he confronts those who seek to maintain status quo:
That this social order with its pauperism, famines, prisons, gallows, armies, and wars is necessary to society; that still greater disaster would ensue if this organization were destroyed; all this is said only by those who profit by this organization, while those who suffer from it – and they are ten times as numerous – think and say quite the contrary.
In 1894, Constance Garnett, who translated the work into English, wrote the following in her translator's preface:
One cannot of course anticipate that English people, slow as they are to be influenced by ideas, and instinctively distrustful of all that is logical, will take a leap in the dark and attempt to put Tolstoy's theory of life into practice. But one may at least be sure that his destructive criticism of the present social and political regime will become a powerful force in the work of disintegration and social reconstruction which is going on around us.[3]
Reception
Tolstoy's relationship with Mohandas Gandhi
In 1908, Tolstoy wrote
With other nonviolent activists
The Kingdom of God is Within You also had a great effect upon James Bevel, a major 1960s strategist of the civil rights movement.[8][9] After reading the book while serving in the U.S. Navy, Bevel came to the conclusion that he would be unable to kill another person. He thereafter sought and was granted an honorable discharge, and entered a seminary for religious training.[10]
Importance of Jesus' words
"The Kingdom of God is Within You" is the key phrase in
See also
- Leo Tolstoy bibliography
- Divine presence
- Kingdom of God
- The Gospel in Brief
- List of books about anarchism
References
- ISBN 0-521-52000-2.
- Christoyannopoulos, Alexandre(2010). Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel. Exeter: Imprint Academic. p. 19.
[Tolstoy] wrote countless essays and books on the topic, but the most often cited one among anarchists is The Kingdom of God Is within You.
- ^ Tolstoy, graf Leo (1894). "The Kingdom of God is Within You": Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion But as a New Theory of Life. Cassell Publishing Company.
- ^ Mohandas K. Gandhi (1929). The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Archived from the original on 2010-08-01.
- ^ Parel, Anthony J. (2002), "Gandhi and Tolstoy", in M. P. Mathai; M. S. John; Siby K. Joseph (eds.), Meditations on Gandhi : a Ravindra Varma festschrift, New Delhi: Concept, pp. 96–112, retrieved 2012-09-08
- ISBN 0-941910-03-2.
- ^ ""Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi: A Double Portrait in the Interior of the Age"- Russian documentary which captures correspondence between the two spiritual teachers of humanity". Press Information Bureau. Retrieved 5 December 2016.
- ^ Randall L. Kryn, "James L. Bevel; The Strategist of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement", in David Garrow, We Shall Overcome, Volume II (1989), Carlson Publishing Company
- ^ Randy Kryn, "Movement Revision Research Summary Regarding James Bevel", October 2005, Middlebury College
- ^ The Children, 1999, David Halberstam
- ^ The Meditation Book, by Blair Abee, pages 25-26
Further reading
- Milivojevic, D. Leo Tolstoy and the Oriental Religious Heritage. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
External links
- The Kingdom of God Is Within You at Standard Ebooks
- The Kingdom of God Is Within You public domain audiobook at LibriVox
- The Kingdom of God Is Within You — complete text in various formats at Internet Archive
- The Kingdom of God Is Within You at Project Gutenberg
- The Kingdom of God Is Within You — complete HTML text by Kingdom Now
- The Kingdom of God Is Within You — complete HTML version, with links to Wikipedia and to Tolstoy's source material
- Tolstoy's Legacy for Mankind- A Manifesto for Nonviolence: Part 1 Part 2