This book took a while to finally get through. After two failed attempts at an ebook, I finally succeeded thanks to a LibriVox audiobook!

I have mixed feelings about the book, though I ultimately liked it. Tolstoy’s ideas are radical, and though I aspire to a certain radicalism in my faith and politics, that is certainly not my nature, so I brought some resistance with me into the text.

Even accounting for that, though, I don’t think Tolstoy’s argument is as self-evident or well reasoned as he thinks it is. He sometimes seemed to spend more time assuring the reader that his conclusions were sound than actually presenting an argument that led to those conclusions. Similarly, he has some views that smack of supersessionism and even racial superiority that need to be wrestled with.

Despite all that, I appreciate the ideals Tolstoy sketched out here, and I suspect they’ll have a lasting impact on me. I hope to come back to this book as I continue to strive toward something greater in religious and social life.

• The Kingdom of God is Within You
• Leo Tolstoy
• religion
• supersessionism
• racism
• Christianity
• anarchism
• Christian anarchism
• radical
• ideal