Wrestling with God - Literature on the Fringes of Christian Orthodoxy

Many of the most Important religious authors in the modern era have done their work on the far fringes of Christian orthodoxy, testing the waters of utopian idealism, intellectual iconoclasm, and the darkness and light found within the soul. This course will explore four such authors who began their lives within the Orthodox Church specifically Leo Tolstoy, Mikhail Bul~akov, ikos Kazantzakis, and Tasos Leivaditis were all baptized as Orthodox Chrrstians, but in every case their wrangling with religious truth would take them into the reaches of atheism, new religious movements, and modern polltics. We will ask why and how thinkers depart, re-enter, and/or reinvent the Christian faith from the fringes. This course is designed for Christians of any affiliation interested in the meaning of Christian literature in its most challenging and
therefore often most fruitful forms.