Flannery O'Connor on Christianity today

O'Connor with peacock at Andalusia

Among the books in my personal library, perhaps my favorite is the fascinating collection of Flannery O'Connor's letters, The Habit of Being (1988). Here's a sample of her straightforward wisdom:

"One of the effects of modern liberal Protestantism has been gradually to turn religion into poetry and therapy, to make truth vaguer and vaguer and more and more relative, to banish intellectual distinctions, to depend on feeling instead of thought, and gradually to come to believe that God has no power, that he cannot communicate with us, cannot reveal himself to us, indeed has not done so, and that religion is our own sweet invention. This seems to be about where you find yourself now. Of course, I am a Catholic and I believe the opposite of all this." - Flannery O'Connor in a letter to Alfred Corn, June 16, 1962

And some wonder at the dwindling congregations of mainline Protestant churches. Honest seekers of the truth with not look where the very concept of objective truth is rejected.


O'Connor died of lupus in 1964 at age 39. The above photo shows her on the front steps of her family farm, Andalusia in Milledgeville, Georgia, as she greets one of her beloved peacocks.