Tolstoy and Religion

Tolstoy answers the question "What is religion?" in his book of the same name as follows: "Religion is neither a one-time belief in certain supernatural events assumed to have occurred at a specific time, nor is it a belief in the necessity of certain rituals and ceremonies. Religion is a relationship established between man and eternal life and God, in accordance with reason and contemporary knowledge, which guides humanity toward its destined goal."

This emphasis on religion by Leo Tolstoy, who is considered one of the world's greatest writers, is quite significant and, naturally, open to debate. We know that from the past to the present, religion has been subject to different perspectives and discussions. At this very point, these ideas, filtered through the mind of a great thinker like Tolstoy, carry content that will contribute to the discussion we are referring to.

So, how does Tolstoy explain this thought, and why did he believe in the importance of religion?

We will answer this question within our article, but before we move on to that, let us recall Tolstoy's life, if you will. Because the traces of life are influential in the shaping of thoughts.

Tolstoy, who is considered one of the most influential and greatest writers of all time, was born on September 9, 1828, as the child of a wealthy family. Losing his mother at the age of two and his father at the age of nine, Tolstoy was raised by his siblings and aunts. They were five siblings, and Tolstoy was the fourth child of the family. His aunts were religious.

Known for his curiosity for reading and research since childhood, Tolstoy began to investigate different teachings from his youth. During this period, due to certain situations he encountered, he stopped going to church. Joining the army in his twenties and traveling through Europe during this process, Tolstoy would not forget what he saw and experienced during this time.

So much so that during this period, he both encountered the brutal consequences of war and witnessed the great poverty experienced by the people. Perhaps as a result of the events he witnessed, the great writer experienced a deep moral crisis at the beginning of his forties. This crisis would also bring with it a spiritual "awakening" that he would experience in the future. On the other hand, he also emerges as a writer moving toward "anarchism" in an intellectual sense. In those very years, he wrote to his friend Vasily Botkin: "The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit but, above all, to corrupt its citizens... From now on, I will not serve any government anywhere."

Other traumatic developments that affected the great writer from his youth onwards emerged with the deaths of his siblings. First his beloved brother Dimitri, and then his other brother Nikolay, fell ill and passed away. Both deaths deeply shook Tolstoy; the great writer began to question life and its meaning. Meanwhile, the shocking and cold face of death did not leave Tolstoy alone in the following years. So much so that he witnessed the deaths of all five of his children, and these deaths also left a distinct mark on him.

When he reached his fifties, Tolstoy returned to religion, both due to the events he encountered and his intellectual journey. However, this time he criticized the church and the institutional understanding of religion with very harsh expressions. According to him, the institutional understanding of religion represents neither religion nor the values and essence of religion. On the contrary, the Orthodox religious mentality does evil to people and alienates them from religion. At this point, Tolstoy says: "The religious leaders, scholars, and the clergy only began to strive to bring the whole world under their own authority; for this, they armed people to kill each other and to rob each other."

The writer expresses his harsh criticisms of the church in one place as follows: "In reality, no religion has preached its ideas in a way as contrary to reason and contemporary knowledge, and as immorally, as church Christianity."

As is well known, the Church would not accept criticisms in this tone and would excommunicate Tolstoy in 1901, nine years before his death. The great writer was now an excommunicated "believer."

I said believer because Tolstoy attached great importance to religion and even thought that "a sane person cannot live without religion." "Because," says Tolstoy, "only religion provides the guide that a sane person needs to determine what they should do and what they should do first and what they should do later."

Yes, according to him, religion guides human life. Therefore, religion is the name of the bond that a person establishes with life. In this sense, if all people on earth fulfill the teachings of Jesus Christ, Tolstoy believed that prosperity would be achieved. The writer had a belief to this degree.

However, Tolstoy sees the influence of religion in social life as weak. The reason for this, as we mentioned before, is the institutional, that is, the dominant religious practice. This practice has destroyed the true values, that is, the essence of religion, and has eliminated the social presence of the sacred. The group that makes the practice we are talking about dominant is a minority group, and this group does not actually believe in "the religious."

"They," says Tolstoy, "only pretend to believe because they find it necessary to bind the masses to the established social order."

So, what do the masses experience at this point, and what is the relationship they establish with religion? He answers this question as follows: "Even if the masses cling to established forms of religion due to inertia, their lives are no longer guided by religious truths, but by customs, traditions, and the legal regulations of the state."

Leo Tolstoy, who founded an ashram (a place of seclusion and a home for the poor in Hinduism) called Tolstoy Farm in 1910 and distributed his wealth to the peasants, influenced by socialist views, left behind a life that would be a lesson to humanity today when he passed away at the age of eighty-two. We are as certain as the breath we take that many precious views such as a simple life, opposition to violence and property, the meaning and value of the sacred, and human virtue are found in the pages of that life, and that these thoughts contribute to the process of becoming human. May his light never fade.

Sources:

Tolstoy/ What is Religion?

İldar Yunusov- Kerami Ünal/ Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's Search for Social Unity on the Axis of Religious Values

Kenan SEVİNÇ/ A CASE ANALYSIS ON THE SEARCH FOR MEANING AND THE RELATIONSHIP WITH RELIGION: LEO TOLSTOY