This Week in Christian History: Tolstoy excommunicated, Quakers protest slavery, Thomas Becket canonized

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Sunday, February 17, 2019

Orthodox Church Excommunicates Leo Tolstoy - February 22, 1901

Russian author Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). | Public Domain

This week marks the anniversary of when famed Russian author Leo Tolstoy was officially excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church.

The excommunication was said to be merely a confirmation of Tolstoy’s own decision to leave the Orthodox faith late in his life, with one Holy Synod document noting that the author of such classics as War and Peace had begun to reject key Christian doctrines.

“Count Leo Tolstoy in his writings on religion has plainly shown himself an enemy of the Orthodox Christian Church,” noted the Synod in 1900.

When Russian Book Union President Sergei V. Stepashin asked the Church to lift its excommunication in 2010, an Orthodox official explained that such an act would not be possible.

“… because the writer himself never made peace with the Church (Leo Tolstoy never publicly renounced his tragic spiritual error), the excommunication by which he separated himself from the Church cannot be removed,” replied Archimandrite Tikhon, secretary of the Patriarchal Cultural Council.