In Front | The Sermon on the Mount: A Russian Author, an Indian Lawyer and an African-American Preacher

Sometimes the New Testament has stirred people to world-changing actions, even if they never fully embraced Jesus’ mission and purpose. The activism of Mahatma Gandhi (also known as Mohandas Gandhi) certainly changed the world. His fight for the rights of fellow human beings began in South Africa, but had even more impact in his home country of India. There he was the leader who, more than any other, led his countrymen to independence from British rule. 

Gandhi’s non-violent philosophy of resistance was certainly influenced by many non-biblical ideas including Hindu texts. However, some key New Testament principles were undoubtedly adopted by Gandhi and were embodied in his activism. 

Gandhi was introduced to the Sermon on the Mount by the great Russian author, Leo Tolstoy. Gandhi attested to the influence Tolstoy’s book The Kingdom of God is Within You had on him, citing Tolstoy as one of three modern individuals who “left a deep impression” on his life. At the center of Tolstoy’s ideas were Jesus’ teaching in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7). 

The first time Gandhi read the Sermon on the Mount, its words “went straight to my heart.” Gandhi would return often to the Sermon during his daily times of meditation and study.

He later said of the passage: 

When I read in the Sermon on the Mount such passages as …”whoever smiteth thee on thy cheek turn to him the other also,” I was simply overjoyed.

In South Africa and India, he and his followers paid a heavy price in terms of beatings or imprisonment. However, the Sermon on the Mount was one of the main influences that kept him committed to nonviolent political action.

Sources: Arren Bennet Lawrence, Comparative Characterization in the Sermon on the Mount: Characterization of the Ideal Disciple, 2017, p. 40; http://www.mkgandhi.org/articles/harriswofford.htm; Accessed March 8, 2018.

Gandhi’s example caught the attention of a young African-American pastor. Martin Luther King called Gandhi “the guiding light of our technique of nonviolent social change.” King wrote about his experience in Montgomery, his first major experience with activism:

When the protest began, my mind, consciously or unconsciously, was driven back to the Sermon on the Mount, with its sublime teachings on love, and the Gandhian method of nonviolent resistance.

Source: Martin Luther King, Jr., “My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” Sept 1, 1958; https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/publications/autobiography-martin-luther-king-jr/chapter-13-pilgrimage-nonviolence; Accessed March 8, 2019.