Confession of a Priest Before the Church

Little is known about this man to the general public. The main work of his life has not been published in full even once over the past century, yet it is hard to compare any other book written in the twentieth century about following Christ with it in power, boldness, and expressive force. This man is Archimandrite Spiridon (Kislyakov), and this book is «Confession of a Priest Before the Church». An anarchist, a rebel, an eccentric, a fearless missionary, the Archpriest Avvakum of the twentieth century, a mystic who found his road to Damascus in the First World War, an accuser whom Patriarch Tikhon took pity on and protected “after all this”... A forgotten name returns; a great book about true freedom in Christ is being published. It is an account of his mission, of encounters with the intelligentsia in the dying Russian Empire, with the prophets of a new culture in the demonic fire of revolution, of work among convicts, of numerous dramatic scenes of war, death, madness, and amid all this astonishing hymns to the Lord, so sincere and powerful that they sound like revelation amid the horrors of the world, a revelation that sounds “as if with the voice of a trumpet” even now.