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This paper is in closed access until 11 July 2020. ; In his later years, Leo Tolstoy wrote numerous books, essays and pamphlets expounding his newly-articulated denunciations of all political violence, whether by dissidents or ostensibly legitimate states. If these writings have inspired many later pacifists and anarchists, it is partly thanks to his masterful deployment of the literary technique of 'defamiliarisation' – or looking at the familiar as if new – to shake readers into recognising the absurdity of common justifications of violence, admitting their implicit complicity in it, and noticing the process which numbed them into accepting such complicity. This paper discusses Tolstoy's use of the imagination to defamiliarise and denounce violence, first by citing a number of typical examples, then by reflecting on four of its subversive characteristics: its disruption of automated perception, its implicit concession of some recognition, its corrosion of conventional respect for traditional hierarchies, and its encouragement of empathy.

This book chapter is closed access until 18 months after the date of publication.

This is a chapter in French from the book, Religion et contestation, reproduced with kind permission of the publisher http://pubp.univ-bpclermont.fr/public/Fiche_produit.php?titre=Religion%20et%20contestation. ; De nombreux chrétiens considèrent le Sermon sur la Montagne comme un résumé éloquent du message de Jésus à ses disciples. Pour les penseurs anarchistes chrétiens tels que Léon Tolstoï, Jacques Ellul, Michael Elliott et Dave Andrews, il contient également la plus poignante des déclarations de Jésus sur la violence – son appel à ne pas résister au mal mais à tendre l'autre joue – une déclaration qui, affirment-ils, ne peut qu'impliquer une condamnation de l'Etat pour son monopole théorique et pratique de l'utilisation prétendument légitime de la violence. Le présent chapitre offre un aperçu de cette exégèse politique radicale, soulignant l'importance politique de ce passage en montrant que Jésus attend de ses disciples une réaction non pas passive mais résolue ; expliquant pourquoi pour les anarchistes chrétiens, Jésus appelle ses disciples à aller au-delà de la loi du talion ; esquissant un ensemble de réflexions anarchistes chrétiennes sur le cycle de la violence et la méthode radicale de Jésus pour le surmonter ; et démontrant pourquoi cette analyse pousse logiquement les anarchistes chrétiens à rejeter l'État moderne. En bref, ce chapitre montre pourquoi, pour les anarchistes chrétiens, le cœur même de la morale chrétienne ne peut qu'impliquer une forme (non-violente) d'anarchisme. Ce chapitre présente donc un axe principal de l'approche contestataire inspirée de la religion qu'est la pensée anarchiste chrétienne.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ; In the last thirty years of his life, Leo Tolstoy wrote numerous books, essays and pamphlets expounding his newly-articulated views on violence, the state, the church, and on how to improve the human condition. Since then, these "Christian anarchist" views have often been dismissed as utopian or naive, and, despite inspiring many activists and intellectuals, often forgotten or ignored. Some of those views and arguments, however, arguably remain apposite today—and can in some cases be applied to broader phenomena than those he identified. This article focuses on one of the aspects of his Christian anarchist thought: his anticlericalism. The first Section recounts the evolution of Tolstoy's views on religion and the church, and briefly describes Tolstoy's peculiar metaphysics. The second outlines his main charges against the church, discusses some common objections to it, and considers the continuing relevance of his anticlericalism. The third seeks to secularise his anticlerical arguments by applying them beyond the church, against secular preachers and institutions, and does so by reflecting on the quality of debate in the contemporary public sphere, on the hypocritical distance between the morality preached by secular "clerics" and their practice, and on the steady process of ossification and betrayal which befalls secular political ideals. The article thus contributes to the literature firstly by summarising, discussing and reflecting upon the anticlericalism of a famous writer who also espoused controversial religious and political views; secondly by succinctly outlining his idiosyncratic metaphysics, including his peculiar reinterpretation of traditional Christian referents; and thirdly by applying the arguments that informed his criticisms of the church to a broader variety of religious and secular secular institutions.

Reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan. The definitive, published, version of record is available here: http://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137341778 ; Tolstoy argued that the core moral teaching of all religious and secular traditions is similar; that this rational core preaches love and a variant of the Golden Rule; that international peace can only be achieved by refusing to concede to the adoption of violent means to resist injustice; and that therefore we all need to strive, by personal example, towards a nonviolent, stateless but peaceful and just utopia. Tolstoy's thought thus provides a potential bridge between secular and religious ideologies (by adopting a language that speaks to and is rooted in both); recalls the simple yet shared moral teaching which could revolutionize the current foundation of the international order; and articulates a critique of political institutions that resonates with and complements recent scholarship.

This book chapter originally appeared in King, S., Salzani, C. and Staley, O. (eds.) Law, Morality and Politics: Global Perspectives on Violence and the State, in 2010, first published by the Inter-Disciplinary Press". ; Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is seen by many Christians as a moving summary of his message to the community of Christian disciples. For Christian anarchist thinkers like Tolstoy, Ellul, Elliott, and Andrews among others, it also contains Jesus' most poignant statement on violence – his call to turn the other cheek – a statement which, they argue, cannot but ultimately imply a condemnation of the state for its theoretical and practical monopoly over the allegedly legitimate use of violence. This paper offers an overview of this radical political exegesis, thus showing why, for Christian anarchists, the very core of Christianity cannot but imply a form of (non-violent) anarchism.

This book chapter is reproduced with permission from the publisher. The full details of the publication can be found here: http://www.atelierdecreationlibertaire.com/Anarchisme-et-religion.html . This text is translated from the chapter "Anarchism and Religion ", originally published in the coordinated collective work by Nathan Jun: Brill's Companion to Anarchism and Philosophy, Boston, Brill, 2017. The Repository record can be found here: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/18221 ; Presque toujours, l'anarchisme est anticlérical, et il est le plus souvent athée. Pourtant, la rencontre de la religion et de l'anarchisme est plus complexe qu'on ne le présume en général. Ces dernières années en particulier, une grande variété d'analyses ont éclos à l'intersection de l'anarchisme et des sciences de la religion. Les interactions entre la religion et l'anarchisme sont diverses : il arrive que les anarchistes reviennent sur leur appréciation de la religion ; parfois, des chercheurs religieux formulent une théologie en dialogue avec des énoncés anarchistes ; on se concentre quelquefois sur la manière qu'ont certains anarchistes d'aborder la religion ; d'autres fois ce sont les textes religieux qui sont interprétés dans le sens d'une politique anarchiste. La rencontre entre anarchisme et religion peut donc se focaliser sur différents aspects de l'un ou de l'autre, et impliquer des approches, des méthodologies et des tonalités d'enquête très variées. Ce texte propose une cartographie des manières qu'ont l'anarchisme et la religion de se croiser à partir de quatre grandes catégories : les différends classiques opposant l'anarchisme à la religion et à ses institutions ; les interprétations anarchistes des personnages et des textes fondateurs de la religion ; la « théologie » anarchiste, distincte de l'exégèse scripturale ; et les études historiques consacrées à des penseurs, des communautés et des mouvements spécifiques se reconnaissant à la fois dans l'anarchisme et dans la religion.