Article February 23, 2004 Issue

THE POWER OF SPIRITUAL SELF-GOVERNMENT

Dan Enemark

As a student majoring in political science, I have been inspired by leaders such as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., who changed the world for the better, starting with self-government of their own thoughts and actions. The prayer-based self-government they developed and practiced became the basis for the momentous political changes they helped to bring about.

For example, in colonial India, Gandhi fought Western colonialism with satyagraha, or "Truth force." Gandhi sought to control himself through reliance on God rather than to control others through coercion, and this self-government brought profound change to the world. Gandhi said: "I have no strength save what God gives me. I have no authority over my countrymen save the purely moral. If He holds me to be a sure instrument for the spread of nonviolence in place of the awful violence now ruling the earth, He will give me the strength and show me the way. My greatest weapon is more prayer. The cause of peace is, therefore, in God's good hands."

D. E.

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