«Новое религиозное сознание» как развитие главной идеи «религии» Л.Н. Толстого – идеи отступничества от православия

Abstract

The work is devoted to the study of the “new religious consciousness” from the point of view of religion, its comparison with other religious systems, and specifically with the religious and moral teachings of L.N. Tolstoy, with which the “new religious consciousness” has much in common. The teachings of L.N. Tolstoy were widely known, criticized by the Orthodox Church, and the figures of the “new religious consciousness” expressed a lot of critical opinions about the teachings of L.N. Tolstoy, they often refused to recognize him as an Orthodox. Nevertheless, they undertook the development of many of Tolstoy’s ideas, which later became the real basis of the “new religious consciousness”. Being in many aspects the development of L.N. Tolstoy teachings, the “new religious consciousness” criticizes “historical” Christianity, its dogmas, contains the ideas of a religious revolution, denies state power, autocracy, and also proposes to create a new religion, build the Kingdom of God on earth, etc. In addition, Tolstoyism and the “new religious consciousness” are also brought together by the fact that both Tolstoy and the figures of the “new religious consciousness” did not rely on Orthodoxy as such in their studies, because they could not even know it enough, because they did not have a systematic theological education, but their ideas were based on Gnosticism, Theosophy, Buddhism, paganism, etc. Therefore, it becomes possible to consider that the “new religious consciousness” not only has a lot of points of contact with the religious and moral teachings of L.N. Tolstoy, not only develops some of his ideas, but also follows the main idea of his “religion” - the idea of apostasy from Orthodoxy.