Almost by accident I started reading 'The kingdom of God is within you' by Tolstoy a couple of months ago.
I haven't read anything by Tolstoy before.
And boy, was I in for a surprise. It was a very powerful and inspiring book.
Being very fond of the counterculture, the hippy movement, free society, open source, tech anarchy, etc - I was very surprised to see him talking about these concepts with such clarity back then.
And it also changed my outlook towards 'Christianity', which I dismissed before as just a religion. Tolstoy carefully builds the idea of Christianity as a philosophy of non-violence, anarchy and peaceful disobedience, claiming that that was the true teaching of Jesus Christ and the reason why Christians have been persecuted and killed everywhere - before the whole thing was transformed into a dogmatic religion.
Tolstoy argues that in order to truly renounce violence, one must not support it in any way, including through proxies - the State (which is backed by the military), the Government and Legal System (which has the police, the judges and the prisons), the corporations (which support the state and use violence to aquire resources), stay away from the Church and religion, Patriotism (which is a brain washing methodology) and so on.
From the perspective of the state, the church, etc, those ideas are very dangerous.
But from the standpoint of humanism, respect for life, the right way to live, these ideas are the truth.
Unfortunately, some people inspired by Tolstoy, like Ghandi or Martin Luther King or Lennon have been murdered, but only after fundamentally changing our society for the better.
Tolstoy himself was excomunicated from the Orthodox Church and burried on a hill.
There is inherent danger in telling people to just love one another. This generates fear and hatred in some.
I hope we'll slowly come to accept the idea more and more.
Anyway, if you haven't read him, please do yourself a favor, the books are available for free.