October
4 weekly readings
Living Relics
Zhivye moshchi
Ivan Turgenev (from *A Sportsman's Sketches*)
This story from Turgenev's famous collection *Zapiski okhotnika* (*A Sportsman's Sketches*, 1852) embodies everything Tolstoy valued: simple peasant faith, acceptance of suffering, and spiritual trans
The Law of God and the Law of This World
Zakon boga i zakon mira sego
Peter Chelčický (from *The Net of Faith*)
This extended excerpt from Chelčický's masterwork *Sít' víry* (*The Net of Faith*, c. 1440) presents his central argument: that true Christianity is incompatible with state power, violence, and secula
Lamennais
Lamene
Leo Tolstoy
This essay introduces Félicité de Lamennais (1782–1854), a French Catholic priest whose spiritual journey from zealous defender of the papacy to excommunicated critic of institutional Christianity par
Revelation and Reason
Otkrovenie i razum
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (from *The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar*)
This excerpt is from the "Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar," a famous philosophical text embedded in Book IV of Rousseau's *Emile* (1762). Speaking through a Savoyard priest who has lost fait