# III explained — The Kingdom of God Is Within You > Chapter companion for The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Tolstoy. ## What happens Tolstoy argues that churches, as institutions, are fundamentally hostile to Christ's true teaching, serving pride, violence, and immobility rather than meekness and life. He critiques the Russian Orthodox Church for perpetuating superstition and idolatry among the masses, suppressing the moral and vital comprehension of Christianity, and contrasts this with the spontaneous rise of rationalistic sects. He concludes that churches deliberately obscure the Sermon on the Mount to maintain their own power and significance. ## Themes in this chapter ### Critique of Church and State Tolstoy directly attacks churches as institutions that are 'not only foreign, but even directly hostile, to Christ’s teaching,' and criticizes their alliance with state power to suppress true Christianity. ### Hypocrisy of Society The chapter exposes the hypocrisy of church leaders who claim to represent Christianity while perpetuating idolatry and deception, such as bishops kissing relics for the sake of the masses. ### True Christianity vs. Pagan Life-Conception Tolstoy contrasts the true moral, vital comprehension of Christianity with the pagan superstitions and idolatry promoted by the churches, calling the latter 'an obsolete paganism in its ossified form.' ## Character check-ins ### Jesus Christ Christ's teaching is presented as the true standard, directly opposed to the churches' principles; the Sermon on the Mount is highlighted as incompatible with church doctrine. ### Leo Tolstoy Tolstoy narrates his personal observations, including an incident at Óptin Cloister where a monk refused to give a peasant the Gospel, illustrating the church's suppression of true Christianity. ### Farrar Mentioned as a church writer whose works, despite their apparent sincerity, are part of the church's distortion of Christianity. ## Key lines > The churches, as churches, are not certain institutions which have at their base the Christian principle, though slightly deviated from the straight path, as some think; the churches, as churches, as assemblies, which assert their infallibility, are antichristian institutions. Churches claiming infallibility are fundamentally opposed to Christianity, not just slightly off course. _Tolstoy asserts that the very nature of churches as infallible institutions makes them antichristian._ > The activity of the Russian Church, in spite of its external veneer of modernness, learning, spirituality, which its members are beginning to assume in their writings, articles, clerical periodicals, and sermons, consists not only in keeping the masses in that consciousness of rude and savage idolatry, in which they are, but also in intensifying and disseminating superstition and religious ignorance, by pushing out of the masses the vital comprehension of Christianity, which has been living in them by the side of the idolatry. The Russian Church actively maintains and worsens the people's superstitious idolatry, suppressing the true understanding of Christianity that already exists among them. _Tolstoy describes the church's role in perpetuating ignorance and blocking moral progress._ > The churches are confronted with a dilemma⁠—the Sermon on the Mount, or the Nicene Creed⁠—one excludes the other: if a man sincerely believes in the Sermon on the Mount, the Nicene Creed, and with it the church and its representatives, inevitably lose all meaning and significance for him; but if a man believes in the Nicene Creed, that is, in the church, that is, in those who call themselves its representatives, the Sermon on the Mount will become superfluous to him. The Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed are mutually exclusive; accepting one makes the other irrelevant. _Tolstoy highlights the fundamental incompatibility between Christ's teachings and church doctrine._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_kingdom_of_god_is_within_you_se/chapters/iii - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_kingdom_of_god_is_within_you_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_kingdom_of_god_is_within_you_se/chapters