We started our book club with The Brothers Karamazov in 2022. It opened up quite a bit of the world for me. I felt like I could see a bit of what it felt like to exist in Russia in the 1880s through the eyes of its author Fydor Dostoyevsky. The dramatic effects of the end of serfdom, the fall out of the war with Napoleon, modernism, industrialism and liberalism from Europe altering the fabric of Russian society and eating away at the power of the monarchy and the Russian Orthodox Church.
Recently I’ve been listening to some discussions on the later works of Leo Tolstoy who like Dostoyevsky had some anxieties about the state of Russia in the late 19th Century. I’m very curious about his journey to Christianity and the criticism he had for the syncretism of the Orthodox Church and the Government of Russia. Creating a form of anarchistic Christianity. As well as how Dostoyevsky’s work relates to it. The syncretism of church and state definitely pops up in The Brothers Karamazov with the Grande Inquisitor section of the novel.
It feels very relevant to the state of modern American Christianity. That the institution of Christianity in America has chosen a partnership with the state. And there seems to be a lot of history revealing how catastrophic that will turn out.
I’d love to read War and Peace, Anna Karenina, or Resurrection next year.
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