Flannery O’Connor and Russell Kirk on the Spiritual Foundation of Political Reform

Introduction

Mary Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) is best known as a Roman Catholic novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She is also known as a Southern writer who wrote in a Gothic style, relying on the culture and setting of the South to bring her stories to life. Little attention has been given to O’Connor’s insight in the realm of political philosophy, even if political philosophy for O’Connor was, in the words of scholar Henry Edmonson, “an irregular and inadvertent activity.”[1] Yet, as Edmonson points out, O’Connor’s interest in political philosophy is not surprising, especially considering the books reviewed for her diocesan newspaper, the thinkers praised in her correspondences, and the themes present in her literature. Among the thinkers whom O’Connor admired was Russell Kirk (1918-1994), who deeply influenced American conservatism in the twentieth century. True reform in America, for both O’Connor and Kirk, must flow from a population with a personal commitment to the Christian faith that has nourished the American and Western soul for centuries. Put simply, political reform must have a spiritual foundation, and this foundation ought to include a personal embrace of the Christian faith.

Flannery O’Connor, Russell Kirk, and Political Philosophy

At first glance, this connection between Flannery O’Connor and Russell Kirk might strike readers as unusual. What does this Catholic novelist have in common with the overtly political Russell Kirk? Yet scholars have been exploring O’Connor as a Catholic writer with insights into political philosophy — and with good reason. For instance, in his important book Flannery O’Connor and the Perils of Governing by Tenderness, Jerome C. Foss writes that “O’Connor’s stories provide a remedy to contemporary political philosophy’s tendency to leave flesh and blood behind in search for generalizable principles” and that “O’Connor herself understood this about her work and intended it.”[2] Scholars like Foss are supported by O’Connor’s own correspondences, published in The Habit of Being, which contain numerous references to political philosophers. In addition, her posthumously published essays in Mystery and Manners also touch on topics of political philosophy. As Foss notes, to say that O’Connor had interest in political philosophy assumes Aristotle’s definition of the term. Politics is defined, according to Aristotle, as a discipline that touches areas of study relating to a good life and human flourishing. In other words, to say that O’Connor had an interest in political philosophy does not mean that she had interest in practical politics or elections. Instead, she was interested in political philosophy as it was developed by thinkers like Plato and Aristotle in the ancient world as well as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas in the medieval. And she was also interested in some modern thinkers who rejected this tradition in the sixteenth and subsequent centuries.[3]

Understood this way, it should not be unusual to draw a connection between O’Connor and Kirk. After all, politics is a discipline that touches all areas of study. Yet, at the same time, it is not accurate to say, as many academics and activists seem to think today, that politics is everything. To the contrary, politics is not everything. Politics itself, in fact, is shaped by deeper and more important influences that include “the arts, literature, philosophy, religion, and community life.” In short, Kirk understood that “it was not by practical politics alone that American and Western civilization would be restored.”[4] Politics, as the ancients understood, is a discipline that touches all areas of life, but it is not everything.[5]

It is worth mentioning here Henry Edmonson, a department chair at Georgia College, who has notably contributed to the understanding of O’Connor’s relationship to political philosophy.[6] Edmonson is the author of Return to Good and Evil (2005), which explores O’Connor’s fiction as a reaction against the nihilistic despair of twentieth century man. Western civilization, believed O’Connor, was on the brink of a moral, philosophical, and religious crisis. The only way to save Western civilization from this crisis is by reminding it of the necessity of God’s grace and the need for redemption. More recently, Edmonson published The Political Companion to Flannery O’Connor (2017), which contains fifteen essays from leading scholars exploring O’Connor’s insights into political philosophy. Of great importance is Edmonson’s own essay published in this collection, in which he explores the similarities between O’Connor and Kirk.[7]

As Edmonson shows, O’Connor had numerous ideas that mirrored Russell Kirk, including her view on the necessity of a spiritual foundation for political reform.[8] Drawing from the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman traditions of the Western world, both O’Connor and Kirk believed that political problems are first spiritual problems. In order to reform society, man must first reform himself. It is not, then, possible to solve all societal problems through the destruction of ancestral institutions or the passing of new laws. We should not believe, as Kirk put it, that by power of positive law “we can solve all the problems of humanity. We can hope to make our world tolerable, but we cannot make it perfect. When progress is achieved, it is through prudent recognition of the limitations of human nature.”[9] Since man is fallen, societal problems can only be solved if individuals first encounter God’s transformative grace. This, suggested O’Connor and Kirk, is the spiritual foundation needed for political reform.

Flannery O’Connor and Russell Kirk Meet 

Before directly discussing the similar view of O’Connor and Kirk on the importance of having a spiritual foundation for political reform, it will first be helpful to explore what these two thinkers thought of each other. It is evident that O’Connor admired Kirk from the fact that she travelled 340 miles from Georgia to Tennessee in hopes of seeing him lecture. Her lengthy travel came despite the fact that she was unable to walk effectively without crutches after being diagnosed with lupus at the age of twenty-five. “I, crutches and all, am going to Nashville this weekend where I hope to hear Russell Kirk lecture at Vanderbilt,” she told her friend in a private letter on October 12, 1955. O’Connor then informed her friend of Kirk’s book from about two years earlier — the book that propelled him into the national spotlight as a leading conservative voice in America. “He wrote a book called The Conservative Mind, which I admire […]”[10] As a renowned historian, philosopher, and critic, Russell Kirk was often considered the father of American conservatism, and this is in large part due to the publication of the book that O’Connor most admired.[11]

O’Connor knew that The Conservative Mind was among the most important works of nonfiction published in the 1950s, earning Kirk widespread respectability and outreach. Written in the aftermath of the New Deal, the Second World War, and the rise of radical ideologies throughout the world, conservatism seemed defeated. As Kirk’s biographer Bradley Birzer writes, “conservatism seemed black, blue, beaten, adrift, and broken, devoid of any real respectability.” Yet, all of this notwithstanding, the unpopularity of conservatism changed throughout the 1950s, and this change is in large part due to the labors of Russell Kirk.[12] Acknowledging the importance of Kirk in shaping American conservatism, O’Connor wrote in a glowing review for her diocesan newspaper that “Mr. Kirk has managed in a succession of books which have proved both scholarly and popular […] to make the voice of an intelligent and vigorous conservative thought respected in this country.” For those who had not yet read him, O’Connor added that Kirk’s The Conservative Mind is the best introduction to his thought. Given the importance that she attributed to Kirk’s book, it is no wonder that in another correspondence O’Connor tried to convince a friend to borrow her personal copy. “If you want them, holler,” said O’Connor, referring to The Conservative Mind and another book by Kirk. “It don’t bother me to wrap up packages.” [13] The renowned book of Russell Kirk, the thinker who helped bring respectability to conservatism, was well worth sharing.

Unfortunately, O’Connor never heard Kirk lecture as she had hoped in her October 12, 1955 letter, but she did get something even better. That is, she was able to meet him one-on-one. Over a week later, O’Connor again wrote to her friend about Kirk, this time noting that she did not hear him lecture. “I didn’t hear Russell Kirk lecture as that turned out to be on Mon. instead of Sat. as I had thought.” Nevertheless, by chance or providence, both O’Connor and Kirk were visiting the same people for the weekend, which means they had ample time together. “He and I were visiting the same people for the weekend, so I saw plenty of him,” she wrote. “He is about 37, looks like Humpty Dumpty (intact) with constant cigar and (outside) porkpie hat.”[14] As both O’Connor and Kirk confirm in their private papers, the meeting was awkward. “He is non-conversational and so am I, and the time we were left alone together for attempts to make talk were like the efforts of two midgets to cut down a California redwood.” Unable to make small talk, O’Connor revealed that they spoke wittily of progressive educational theorists William Heard Filpatrick and John Dewey:

“Me: I read old William Heard Kilpatrick died recently. John Dewey’s dead too, isn’t he?

Kirk: Yes, thank God. Gone to his reward. Ha ha.

Me: I hope there’re children crawling over him.

Kirk: Yes, I hope he’s with the unbaptized enfants.

Me: No, they would be too innocent.

Kirk: Yes, Ha ha. With the unbaptized enfants.

Me: Yes.[15]”

These two men were figureheads of the Progressive Education movement, which sought to replace liberal education with a pragmatic one.[16] And so, in an attempt at humor that conveys their deep similarities of thought, O’Connor and Kirk joked about Dewey being in Limbo, the place where the medievals taught that unbaptized infants go after death. This conversation is, as O’Connor suggests, an awkward attempt at conversation. More importantly, however, this conversation reveals that these two thinkers admired each other to the point of being nervous upon meeting. In his own telling of their meeting, Edmonson suggests that the awkwardness was due to Kirk who, admiring O’Connor, “related to her with diffidence.”[17] The cause of the awkwardness notwithstanding, it is evident that O’Connor and Kirk saw each other as a kindred spirit in the fight against the progressivism of Dewey and others.

After their meeting, O’Connor read another book by Kirk, Beyond the Dreams of Avarice, which she reviewed for her diocesan newspaper. O’Connor noted that the title of the book is borrowed from a phrase of Samuel Johnson. “The title is a phrase of Dr. Johnson’s and it is a high praise to say of Mr. Kirk’s book that Dr. Johnson would almost certainly admire it, both for its thought and the vigor with which it is expressed.” She also praised Kirk in this review for being “one of those scholars whom John Dewey detested.”[18] O’Connor was no progressive, and she admired Kirk for intelligently resisting the progressive spirit of the age.

O’Connor looked forward to the publication of Kirk’s upcoming conservative periodical. In a July 21, 1956 letter, O’Connor mentioned that Kirk was starting a bi-monthly periodical to be called The Conservative Review, which she mistakenly thought “will be out in two weeks.” She added excitedly that “it should be very good.” Here O’Connor was referring to Kirk’s upcoming Modern Age, a publication that would not be out for over a year, which Kirk had originally wanted to call The Conservative Review. Sometime later, on August 9, 1957, O’Connor wrote to a friend that “I haven’t seen Modern Age yet, but I am trying to get hold of it and will send it along to you if I do. This is what was going to be the Conservative Review.”[19]

Although O’Connor and Kirk were not identical in their thinking, they were quite similar. Kirk, after all, was a conservative who wanted to conserve the Christian humanist tradition. Relatedly, O’Connor was primarily a Roman Catholic who liked Kirk because his Christian humanism opened itself to a favorable reception to believers. In other words, Flannery O’Connor, who never labeled herself a conservative, was first and foremost a Catholic writer who held that belief in Christ “is a matter of life and death.”[20] Kirk, who converted to Catholicism about a decade later, was first and foremost the father of an imaginative conservatism that transcended the Republican Party and defended the permanent things. Such a conservatism, standing athwart ideological thinking on both left and right, lent itself to favorable reception by many Catholics, O’Connor included.

As a result, in his own account of their meeting, Kirk assumed that O’Connor admired him due to the compatibility of his own views and O’Connor’s faith. Kirk wrote that before their meeting, O’Connor had read some of his essays in Commonweal, America, The Month, The Dublin Review, and other Catholic periodicals.[21] By the 1950s, Kirk was already an avid writer in prominent Catholic publications and an ally of the Catholic Church. Many years after her death in 1964, Kirk would see first-hand O’Connor’s personal library, which included her personal copy of The Conservative Mind filled with annotations.[22] In The Conservative Mind, Kirk wrote favorably about the Catholicism of John Henry Newman, Orestes Brownson, and Alexis de Tocqueville, likely adding to the list of reasons why O’Connor enjoyed the book.

Thus, O’Connor realized that Kirk, though not yet a Catholic, was a thinker who drank deeply from the wellspring of the Catholic intellectual tradition. As such, it is evident why she admired him. Although unbaptized as a child, Kirk gradually discovered Christianity and then Roman Catholicism through extensive thinking and reading, especially the early Fathers of the Church. Throughout the 1950s, Kirk pored over the writings of thinkers like Christopher Dawson, Romano Guardini, Etienne Gilson, Josef Pieper, Jacques Maritain, Gabriel Marcel, and others.[23] Relatedly, Flannery O’Connor also read these thinkers throughout the 1950s, referencing most of them in her correspondences and reviews. Acknowledging that he and O’Connor had deep similarities, Kirk recalled years later that “there was much they should have talked about during that weekend with the Cheneys.” After all, they seemed “to agree on everything.”[24]

O’Connor and Kirk’s meeting in October 1955 left a lasting impression on both of them. Kirk soon began reading all of the stories that O’Connor had written. He then wrote to poet T.S. Eliot that he also should read her. Eliot responded that he had read O’Connor per Kirk’s recommendation, but quickly added that he was “quite horrified” by her stories. She certainly had “an uncanny talent of high order,” but Eliot’s nerves were “just not strong enough to take much of disturbance.”[25] Kirk later wrote that he admired O’Connor for many of the same reasons as he admired Simone Weil — and that if T.S. Eliot, if he would move beyond the unsettling surface of her stories, would feel the same way. In other words, Kirk recognized that O’Connor was an author whose stories reflected a moral imagination which grew from a faith like Eliot’s.  This is something that Kirk would not forget, and he remained a prominent supporter and avid reader of O’Connor for the rest of his life.[26]

In addition to realizing Kirk’s admiration, O’Connor also realized that she and the taciturn Humpy Dumpty shared many views. As she put it in a book review, Kirk challenged the problematic political and intellectual developments that had grown in popularity since the Enlightenment. The more extreme forms of Enlightenment liberalism, thought O’Connor, were atheistic and could not accept divine truth. Popular conservatism, however, had the opposite problem, as it had no capacity to “rethink divine truth or re-examine human society.” Yet Kirk had committed neither of these mistakes. Instead, he was able to place divine wisdom at the center of his thought and, as a result, he had helpful insights into politics.[27] By placing Christ at the center of his inner thought, suggested O’Connor, Kirk was able to write a book that might contribute to good and lasting political reform.

Thus, on that day in October 1955, two similar thinkers met. Not only were O’Connor and Kirk similar in the ways they viewed matters of political philosophy, but they were both aware that the other person shared such views. As Edmonson puts it in his Political Companion to Flannery O’Connor, both O’Connor and Kirk shared concern over:

“a superficial reliance on statistics at the expense of rigorous moral discourse; a zeal for social improvement that may relieve the reformer of the obligation for personal virtue; the prevalence of “ideology” at the expense of principled practical wisdom; and the deterioration of traditional theology into a new kind of humanitarian religion in which the reformer seeks to fill his own spiritual emptiness with a kind of “do-goodism,” anointing himself priest over his self-fashioned spirituality.”[28]

As will be further explored below, both of them were skeptical of efforts to remake society without first making Christ the center of a person’s life. According to this view, good and lasting political reform is not possible without a spiritual foundation. In other words, both O’Connor and Kirk believed that the reform of the individual person, made possible via the influx of God’s grace, is necessary for political reform.

The Spiritual Foundation of Political Reform

Russell Kirk’s views on reform were inseparable from his imaginative conservatism. According to Kirk, such a conservatism is a disposition rather than a set body of political dogmas. Within the opening pages of The Conservative Mind, Kirk provided six canons of conservative thought. These canons were the dispositions that conservatives have had in common over the centuries, beginning with Burke and extending to George Santayana and T.S. Eliot, and none of these canons were contrary to the Catholic imagination of O’Connor. First, said Kirk, the conservative believes in a transcendent order that governs society. This is why political problems are, at root, spiritual problems. Second, the conservative appreciates the variety and mystery of human existence. Third, the conservative dislikes certain notions of “equality.” To be sure, equality before God and the courts is fine, but equality of outcome results in servitude. Fourth, the conservative believes that freedom and property are linked. Fifth, the conservative holds that “custom, convention, and old prescriptions” are checks upon “man’s anarchistic impulse and upon the innovator’s lust for power.” Sixth, the conservative understands that change should not be hasty. While recognizing the necessity of prudent reform, the conservative recognizes that hasty and uncareful reform is like the “devouring conflagration” seen in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Earth’s Holocaust.[29] Within these canons, then, is a rejection of ideology and a commitment to the moral virtue of individual persons. Positive change in America, for Kirk, comes not primarily from political activism and abstract political dogmas but instead from a return to Christian faith and the pursuit of virtue. Good and lasting political reform, after all, requires a cultural foundation and, before even that, a spiritual foundation.

These six canons of conservative thought would certainly be in alignment with the Catholicism of O’Connor. This assertion, I admit, might strike current readers as a surprising one. Both in O’Connor’s day and now, Roman Catholicism is not often politically conservative, and there is little evidence to suggest that O’Connor herself was interested in practical politics. Yet, in making such a statement, I refer to imaginative conservatism as Kirk described it, not to the political mantras and policy positions called conservatism that dominate current thinking. O’Connor’s Catholic faith, like Kirk’s imaginative conservatism, was innately committed to conserving whatever is good, true, and beautiful in Western culture.

That the Catholic faith is committed to conserving whatever is good, true, and beautiful in Western culture stems from a two-fold historical fact. On the one hand, the Catholic Church did much to shape Western civilization as we know it. Europe was at one time predominately Catholic, and Europe’s identity was shaped in many ways by its Judeo-Christian heritage. On the other hand, certain elements of Western thought and philosophy are inseparable parts of Catholic belief. This is why, for instance, Pope Benedict XVI warned about the de-Hellenization of Christianity in his 2006 Regensburg Lecture. It is this conserving attribute that Kirk recognized as one of Catholicism’s strengths. In a passage from O’Connor’s favorite book by Kirk, The Conservative Mind, the taciturn Humpty Dumpty wrote:

“Burke remarked, more than once, the beneficial influence of Catholicism as a system innately conservative; Tocqueville described its conservative tendency in American life and predicted its growth; in this century, Irving Babbitt wrote that perhaps the Roman Catholic Church (which he did not love) may become the only effective instrument for preserving civilization. Brownson, formerly saturated with every radical speculation and now purged of them all, took this duty of conservation upon the foundation of religious principle.”[30]

Much like Kirk’s conservatism, O’Connor’s Catholic faith promoted belief in a transcendent order, and it recognized the unfathomable dignity of the human person. As such, it was antithetical to any ideology and it did not reduce the human person to an “ism” — Jacobinism, progressivism, socialism, fascism, communism, or any other ideology that, in the words of Kirk, reduce man to “intellectual servitude.”[31] The Church of O’Connor’s unwavering devotion stood against the worst excesses of society-wrenching ideology on both left and right, and it stood firm as a conserving institution. With Edmund Burke, it held that “the human heart, in reality, is the fountain of evil.” [32] As a result, it held that man’s fallen nature cannot be reversed by tearing down ancestral institutions or by cutting oneself off from the past. Evil in the world can and should be resisted, but this can only successfully happen when individuals make God the center of their existence. In this way, O’Connor was writing within the context of the Judeo-Christian tradition of the Western world:

The Judeo-Christian tradition has formed us in the west; we are bound to it by ties which may often be invisible, but which are there nevertheless. […] For my part, I shall have to remain well within the Judeo-Christian tradition. I shall have to speak, without apology, of the church, even when the Church is absent; of Christ, even when Christ is not recognized.[33]

As a writer within the Judeo-Christian tradition, O’Connor’s commitment to Christianity influenced her writing more than anything else. “I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy,” wrote O’Connor in an essay. “This means that for me the meaning of life is centered in our Redemption by Christ and what I see in the world I see in its relation to that.”[34] Thus, for O’Connor, to improve society a person must make God the center of his life. As for herself, she proudly made Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist the center of her own, adding that “all the rest of life is expendable.”[35]

And so, in order to reform society, O’Connor believed that man must first allow his own heart to be transformed by Christ. In order to do this, however, man must first recognize his own limitations and imperfectability. As O’Connor put it, “the good is the ultimate reality,” yet “the ultimate reality has been weakened in human beings as a result of the Fall, and it is this weakened life that we see.”[36] Man’s nature has been corrupted by the Fall, believed O’Connor, and he is in need of God’s grace. This principle, she understood, is the bedrock of true political reform.

As Jerome C. Foss points out, O’Connor was therefore worried about the tendency of contemporary man to “govern by tenderness.” Rather than having the ancient and medieval understanding of personal virtue and the common good as guiding paradigms for political life, modern man has chosen what O’Connor called “tenderness” as his guiding principle. To be sure, “tenderness” might seem at first glance to be consistent with the Christian worldview, especially with the command of Christ to “love thy neighbor.” However, as Foss points out, O’Connor understood that modern man’s “tenderness” does not have a proper understanding of the human person or a proper understanding of Christ to sufficiently ground and orient modern political life. “In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness,” wrote O’Connor. “It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror.”[37] When separated from Christ and wrapped in abstract political dogmas, tenderness results in disaster.

When separated from a spiritual foundation, politics is not enough. This is an insight of the Judeo-Christian tradition, which O’Connor and Kirk both adhered to. At the same time, though, this is also an insight of the Greco-Roman tradition. In The Republic, Plato draws an analogy between the soul and the polis. The human soul, like the polis, has three parts. Whereas the polis has its guardians, soldiers, and workers, the soul has its intellect, will, and appetite. The intellect resembles the guardians, the will resembles the military, and the appetite resembles the workers. In the same way that the guardians should rule over the soldiers and workers, so too should the intellect rule over the will and appetite. “So reform of the soul and reform of society must proceed in parallel fashion,” concludes Kirk, when discussing Plato’s analogy of the soul and the polis. If a man falls prey to the impulse of his will and appetite, or if he allows himself to be tricked by the sloganeering sophist, then he will not be able to reform society.[38] Then how does a man, according to Plato, contribute to the wellbeing of society? By striving for Justice. That is, by going about our “proper business, unselfishly, moved by a deep concern for the common good.” As Kirk puts it, “if we form in our minds a concept of the just republic, perhaps we can begin to understand the character of the just man — and commence our social reform thus by reforming one individual, one’s own soul.”[39]

O’Connor expressed this view in her book review of Eric Voegelin’s Order and History. Here O’Connor claimed that Voegelin’s third volume, Plato and Aristotle, was the most interesting of the three. Quoting Voegelin, O’Connor wrote that “man is written in larger letters.” As a result, she added that “the diseases of the soul are carried over into society.”[40] Plato and other ancients, both O’Connor and Kirk understood, were concerned with opening man’s eyes to higher realities of existence and to recovering order in the soul and society. Plato and other ancients, in other words, understood that good and lasting political reform requires the reform of one’s own soul.

This view of political reform can be seen throughout O’Connor’s stories. This view of political reform is seen, for instance, in the short story “Everything That Rises Must Converge.” In this story, the reader meets a young man named Julian, a recent college graduate and aspiring writer. He lives with his mother, a rather complicated character. On the one hand, Julian’s mother is a widow who struggled to feed, clothe, and put her son through school. On the other hand, she is also opinionated and racist. Despite her complexity as a character, Julian sees no good in his mother. As a progressive advocate of racial equality, he is disgusted by his mother’s racial prejudice. O’Connor writes that Julian’s great-grandfather was a former governor, and his grandfather was a prosperous landowner. Julian’s mother takes great pride in their ancestry and family heritage. Julian, however, does not. He is eager to break from a past that he sees as plagued by inequality and racism. He wants to put the past behind him, and he is haunted by the fact that his mother, a product of the past world he hates, is the woman who supports him.

Julian and his mother get onto a public bus, which provides the setting for the story. It is evident that Julian’s views on racial progress do not stem, as they should, from a properly ordered soul. Instead, his views on racial progress stem from a desire to “teach his mother a lesson.” After riding on the bus for a while, a black woman and her young son enter. Julian and his mother then get off at a bus stop with the black woman and her son. Julian’s mother then offers the young boy a penny. Insulted, the black woman quickly attacks Julian’s mother, causing her to fall to the ground. Julian then vengefully tells his mother, who at this point is sitting on the ground, that she deserved the attack. She was a racist, and she deserved what she got.

Suddenly, Julian realizes that his mother is having a severe stroke. For the first time in the story, Julian expresses sympathy toward his mother. But at this point, it is too late. She is on the brink of death.

“‘Mother!’ He cried. ‘Darling, sweetheart, wait!’  Crumpling, she fell to the pavement. He dashed forward and fell at her side, crying, ‘Momma, momma!’ He turned her over. Her face was fiercely distorted. One eye, large and staring, moved slightly to the left as if it had become unmoored. The other remained fixed on him, raked his face again, found nothing and closed.

‘Wait here, wait here!’ he cried and jumped and began to run for help toward a cluster of lights he saw in the distance ahead of him. ‘Help! Help!’ he shouted, but his voice was thin, scarcely a thread of sound. The lights drifted farther away the faster he ran, and his feet moved numbly as if they carried him nowhere. The tide of darkness seemed to sweep him back to her, postponing from moment to moment his entry into the world of guilt and sorrow.”[41]

In this tragic moment, Julian encounters God’s grace and realizes the disordered state of his own soul, especially his self-righteousness and pride. Julian’s soul becomes properly ordered because he realizes, perhaps for the first time, that he is sinful and imperfect. At this moment, he realizes that his mother is not what is wrong with the world. The line between good and evil resides within each human heart, his own included. The successful effort to better order society begins, for Julian, with the moment of his mother’s death. Perhaps now his aims at racial progress will not be rooted in vengeance, and perhaps he will not try to reform others without first reforming himself.

In “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” O’Connor therefore suggests that the reform of the individual must come before the reform of society. As Edmonson puts it, “To expect, then, that an individual will improve himself before, or at least as, he attempts to reform those around him, is not just the proper order of things, it is also a safeguard.” A certain measure of humility and even self-doubt is necessary in a reformer’s psyche. Without it, the reformer will too sharply wield the “dangerously sharp edge of zeal.”[42] The reformer with a properly ordered soul, who has humility and self-doubt, might contribute to the greater order of society. Yet the reformer without a properly ordered soul risks cutting through the fabric of societal order with the sword of ideology. Politics is not everything, and therefore it needs a spiritual foundation. If it is lacking one, then it can become a dangerous weapon, a kind of sword that can cut through the delicate fabric of the social order.

This view is seen in Russell Kirk’s Beyond the Dreams of Avarice, another book that O’Connor admired. The conservative, says Kirk, “believes that the only sure reform which a man can effect is the improvement of one human unit, himself; and he thinks that the really important change required for the betterment of society is a change in heart.”[43] Not all human problems can be solved by political activity. At best, we can make the world around us tolerable, but we can never make it perfect. And when we make it tolerable — when some degree of progress has been achieved — it is only through first recognizing the reality of our sinful nature.

Kirk’s first canon of conservative thought also conveys this thinking. In the beginning of The Conservative Mind, Kirk suggests that all “political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems.” As a result, true politics is the art of “apprehending and applying the Justice which ought to prevail in a community of souls.”[44] Kirk wrote elsewhere that “there are two aspects or types of order: the inner order of the soul, and the outer order of the commonwealth.”[45] Indeed, both O’Connor and Kirk knew that societal problems must be solved by first addressing the evil that resides in each human heart. The inner order of the soul must come before, or at least as, political reform is achieved.

That political reform requires a spiritual foundation is seen in other stories by O’Connor. For instance, in “The Barber,” O’Connor tells the story of a progressive college professor unable to convince a group of racists in the Deep South to vote for Darmon, a candidate who favors racial equality. Unable to persuade the barber and his customers, the professor goes home and crafts a pretentious speech to convince them. The professor then returns to the barber shop and, so upset that he cannot coherently speak, explodes in a self-righteous rage. He then punches the barber and leaves abruptly. His desire for social reform did not stem from an ordered soul and love of the other but instead from a self-righteous pride. As a result, he does not contribute to good and lasting political reform. To the contrary, given the disorder within his own soul, the progressive college professor only adds to the hatred and violence that he seeks to abolish.[46] There is no moment of grace for the professor, and hence there is no inner order for his soul. In the end, then, his efforts to reform are futile, even harmful.

By focusing on a spiritual foundation for political reform, both O’Connor and Kirk rejected ideology. “Being neither a religion nor an ideology, the body of opinion termed conservatism possesses no Holy Writ and no Das Kapital to provide dogma,” wrote Kirk. He added that “conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order.”[47] Ideology is like an inverted religion because it denies the Christian doctrine of salvation through grace. The ideologue instead believes in the salvation of man here and now on this earth through activism or revolution. In contrast to the conservative, who believes that salvation can only come from divine grace, the ideologue believes that salvation comes from achieving an earthly utopia. In this way, ideologies all hold in common the belief that political dogmas can replace the inner order of the soul. As Edmonson points out, Kirk’s The Conservative Mind provides an elaboration of the most central conservative principle, the rejection of ideology.[48] In this regard, the conservative, like Burke and Tocqueville and others, recognizes that the safeguard of external order in society is not radical political reform but instead a return to personal virtue and religious faith. In The Conservative Mind, Kirk put it as follows:

“The…conservative is concerned, first of all, for the regeneration of spirit and character—with the perennial problem of the inner order of the soul, the restoration of the ethical understanding and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is founded. This is conservatism at its highest.”[49]

Related to this view of political reform, furthermore, was a shared view of O’Connor and Kirk on the place of suffering in human life. It is impossible, they both held, to eliminate human suffering with activism and abstract political theory. Instead, we should embrace the reality of suffering, caused usually by “unconscious motivations of the human heart steered by original sin.”[50] To an even greater extent than a problem to be addressed, said O’Connor, suffering is a mystery sent by God for man to endure. As a novelist, therefore, O’Connor had “a distrust of the abstract, a sense of human dependence on the grace of God, and a knowledge that evil is not simply a problem to be solved but a mystery to be endured.”[51] The man with an ordered soul does not wish to use politics to abolish all human suffering but instead he accepts the suffering of human existence as a part of God’s plan. “Christianity,” wrote Kirk, quoting Edmund Burke, “envisages a framework for human society in which earthly miseries have a recognized, permanent, and honorable place. They are trials sent by Heaven to test and train us; as such, it is impious to repine against them.” Referencing the honorable place of suffering in conservative thought, Kirk writes the following:

“Contemptuous of the notion of human imperfectability, Burke modeled his psychology on this Christian picture of sin and tribulation. Poverty, brutality, and misfortune are indeed portions of the eternal order of things; sin is a terribly real and demonstrable fact, the consequence of our depravity, not of erring institutions; religion is the consolation for these ills, which never can be removed by legislation or revolution. Religious faith makes existence tolerable; ambition without pious restraint must end in failure, often involving in its ruin that beautiful reverence which solaces common men for the obscurity and poverty of their lot.”[52]

For O’Connor and Kirk, embracing suffering can contribute to good and lasting political reform because doing so is an antidote to ideology. The ideologue wants to abolish all human suffering, whereas the Christian knows that suffering is a part of the human condition and meant to purify us. The ideologue wants to use politics to create an earthly utopia, whereas the Christian knows that utopia is impossible in this valley of tears. The ideologue wants political reform without a spiritual foundation, whereas the Christian knows that personal reform is needed for good and lasting political reform. Relatedly, the Christian does not seek the kind of reform demanded by the utopian, but instead he seeks the humble kind that makes the world more tolerable, one person at a time — beginning with the reform himself.

As Robert Evans writes, it is no wonder that O’Connor valued the writings of traditionalist conservative thinkers, Kirk included. O’Connor understood that American society, filled like all societies with individuals contaminated by pride and original sin, is imperfect. Therefore, she hoped that America would not turn to a particular political or economic program but instead to the Christian faith that nourished American and Western civilization for centuries. Individuals in America must bring order to their own souls by putting Christ at the center of their existence. Only then will America become a better, although not perfect, society. Utopia can never exist here on Earth, but with Christ at the center of a man’s existence, he can help make the world less imperfect.[53]

Conclusion

Although a southern Catholic writer of fiction, Flannery O’Connor has insight into matters of political philosophy. Within the books reviewed for her diocesan newspaper, the letters found in her private papers, and her long list of novels and short stories is interesting commentary on matters of political philosophy that, in many ways, mirrors the views of Russell Kirk. Among the ideas that O’Connor and Kirk shared was their belief that political reform requires a spiritual foundation. The problems of America cannot be solved only by political legislation. On the contrary, good and lasting political reform can only be achieved by recognizing the limits of our human nature and seeking personal reform. “Aye, a good man is hard to find; in Adam’s fall we sinned all,” said Kirk, summarizing O’Connor’s view and referencing one of her stories.[54] Fallen man cannot save himself, nor can he find salvation through the establishment of a political utopia. Man can only find inner order of the soul by the grace of God, and only when men have an inner order of the soul can they improve the world around them. No amount of zeal, sloganeering, or protesting can serve as a substitute.

Politics, after all, is not everything. For O’Connor and Kirk, political activism is not the primary way to improve society or to preserve American and Western civilization. Both knew that renewing culture is the preeminent task of our time, and in order to do so, it is first essential to return to the Christian religion that grounds our culture. We must, in other words, rediscover afresh the Christian faith that once gave meaning to Western culture. Politics can only be renewed if culture is renewed, and the culture can be renewed only if the cult — the joining together for worship — is rediscovered. The reliance on divine grace for personal inspiration and guidance is, according to this view, of the upmost importance. It is, to echo the words of St. Paul and T.S. Eliot, the only way to “redeem the times.”

 

Notes

[1]  This is the description included in Edmonson’s introduction to an important collection of essays on the political thought of Flannery O’Connor. For the full context, see Henry Edmonson, “Introduction,” found in The Political Companion to Flannery O’Connor (Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 2017), 1.

[2] Jerome C. Foss, Flannery O’Connor and the Perils of Governing by Tenderness (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2019), ix. Among Foss’s many contributions to understanding the political philosophy of O’Connor, Foss explores O’Connor’s belief that we should return to a pre-modern and Catholic understanding of human nature and moral development. Foss’s book is a particularly important contribution to understanding O’Connor’s writings in relation to political philosophy. In this book, Foss shows that O’Connor is a commentator on the history of Western political thought. Foss carefully preserves O’Connor’s primary identity as a Catholic novelist, but he also carefully explores O’Connor as a critic of contemporary secular democracy. He extensively explores O’Connor’s belief as conveyed in her introduction to A Memoir of Mary Anne that “in the absence of faith, we are now governed by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness and becomes wrapped in abstract political theories, its logical outcome is terror.” See O’Connor, “A Memoir of Mary Anne,” in Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, eds. Robert Fitzgerald and Sally Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1969), 227.

[3] Foss, Flannery O’Connor and the Perils of Governing by Tenderness, 3-4.

[4] Michael Federici, “Reassessing Russell Kirk: Three Critical Views.” The Imaginative Conservative. April 27, 2014.

 [5] This point is made in these pages by Benjamin G. Lockerd, “Liberal Education and Politics: The Case of the Tempest,” VoegelinView. April 30, 2021.

[6] In addition to the works of Edmonson, a few works should be mentioned here. Aside from being relevant to those interested in O’Connor’s thought in general, these works clearly demonstrate that O’Connor can be studied for her insights into political philosophy. Notable works include Jon Lance Bacon’s Flannery O’Connor and Cold War Culture (2005) and Robert Donahoo’s Flannery O’Connor in the Age of Terrorism (2010), both of which relate O’Connor’s works to current American political and cultural life. See Jon Lance Bacon, Flannery O’Connor and Cold War Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Also see Avis Hewitt and Robert Donahoo, eds., Flannery O’Connor in the Age of Terrorism (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2010). Also notable is Ralph Wood’s Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South (2005) and John Desmond’s Risen Sons (1987). These two books are important in understanding O’Connor’s Catholicism as influencing her understanding of politics, history, and culture. See Ralph C. Wood, Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004). Also see John F. Desmond, Risen Sons: Flannery O’Connor’s Vision of History (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987).

[7] Henry T. Edmonson, Return to Good and Evil: Flannery O’Connor’s Response to Nihilism (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2005); Henry Edmonson, The Political Companion to Flannery O’Connor (Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 2017); Henry Edmonson, “He Thinks He’s Jesus Christ: Flannery O’Connor, Russell Kirk, and the Problem of Misguided Humanitarianism,” in The Political Companion to Flannery O’Connor (Lexington, Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 2017), 251-277.

[8] Edmonson, it should be noted, briefly addresses this idea in his own essay. As a result, I have used his essay in formulating my own thoughts on the matter. For instance, he clearly implies a similar view on the inner order of the soul and external order of society in his analysis of O’Connor’s short story “Everything that Rises Must Converge.” His analysis is included below in this paper. He also states outright that a point of intersection between O’Connor and Kirk is their shared concern over “a zeal for social improvement that may relieve the reformer of the obligation for personal virtue.” See Edmonson, “He Thinks He’s Jesus Christ!,” 253. Again, Edmonson writes that “Both O’Connor and Kirk were insistent that, though continual social improvement is necessary and desirable, those so engaged should not neglect their own moral growth; to do so would be the worst sort of hypocrisy.” Edmonson, “He Thinks He’s Jesus Christ!,” 259. Throughout the essay, Edmonson conveys this important point. My own thoughts on the matter, then, are not entirely original, but they are certainly an elaboration and development of this point that Edmonson and others have noted.

[9] Russell Kirk, Concise Guide to Conservatism (1957: reprinted; Washington, D.C: Regnery Gateway Editions, 2019), 5. This book was originally published under the title The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Conservatism.

[10] Flannery O’Connor, “A letter to ‘A.’” October 12, 1955, published in The Letters of Flannery O’Connor: The Habit of Being, edited by Sally Fitzgerald (1979; New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988), 110. Unless otherwise cited, all letters referenced in this essay come from this book.

[11] For more, see George Nash, “In Honor of Russell Kirk,” The Imaginative Conservative. January 2013, https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2017/06/honor-russell-kirk-george-nash-timeless.html.

[12] Bradley Birzer, Russell Kirk: American Conservative (Kentucky: University of Kentucky, 2015), 3.

[13] Flannery O’Connor, “Letter to ‘A.’” June 1, 1956.

[14] Flannery O’Connor, “A Letter to A.” October 20, 1955.

[15] Ibid.

[16]  Russell Kirk discusses his view on the purpose of liberal education and criticizes the views of John Dewey in his essay, “The Conservative Purpose of Liberal Education.” The Essential Russell Kirk (1987; reprinted Delaware: ISI Books, 2007), 398-407. O’Connor similarly criticizes Dewey’s view of education in her private correspondences. See Flannery O’Connor, “Letter to Betty Boyd Love,” October 18, 1951. That O’Connor and Kirk both criticized Dewey regarding the progressive effort to reform American education suggests another important similarity. In addition to being anti-progressive in general, both O’Connor and Kirk understood the importance of a traditional liberal arts education, and both therefore opposed progressive efforts to transform American education. In a 1951 letter to a friend, O’Connor jokingly wrote that, when it comes to children, parents ought to do the opposite of what Dewey and the progressives tell them. “Anything that Wm Heard Kilpatrick & John Dewey say do, don’t do…” See Flannery O’Connor, Letter to Betty Boyd Love. October 18, 1951.

[17] Edmonson, “He Thinks He’s Jesus Christ!,” 254.

[18] She quickly added, however, that Kirk had given himself this noble title. See Flannery O’Connor, “A Review of Russell Kirk’s Beyond the Dreams of Avarice,” in The Bulletin, July 21, 1956.

[19] Flannery O’Connor, “A letter to ‘A.’” August 9, 1957.

[20] Flannery O’Connor, “Author’s Note to the Second Edition, Wise Blood, second edition (1962; reprinted New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Publishers, 2007), 0.

[21] Russell Kirk, “Flannery O’Connor: Notes by Humpty Dumpty” Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, date unknown, https://kirkcenter.org/kirk-essay-flannery-oconnor/. At this time still a self-professed Protestant, Kirk would not convert to Roman Catholicism until 1963, many years after he met O’Connor. As Bradley Birzer puts it, by late 1951, Kirk was “an ‘Anglo-Catholic by conversion and conviction’ following his masters: Burke, Coleridge, and Paul Elmer More. For more, see Bradley Birzer, “Russell Kirk: Conservative, Convert, Catholic,” Catholic World Report, October 19, 2018.

[22] Russell Kirk, “Flannery O’Connor: Notes by Humpty Dumpty” Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, date unknown, https://kirkcenter.org/kirk-essay-flannery-oconnor/.

[23] This list is taken from Dr. Birzer’s Catholic World Report essay. See footnote 21.

[24] Russell Kirk, “Flannery O’Connor: Notes by Humpty Dumpty” Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, date unknown, https://kirkcenter.org/kirk-essay-flannery-oconnor/.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Flannery O’Connor, “A Review of Russell Kirk’s Beyond the Dreams of Avarice.” The Bulletin, July 21, 1956.

[28] Edmonson, “He Thinks He’s Jesus Christ!,” 253.

[29] Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (1953; reprinted New Jersey: Gateway Editions, 2019), 8-9.

[30] Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 245-246.

[31] Russell Kirk, “The Drug of Ideology,” in The Essential Russell Kirk (Delaware: ISI Books, 2007), 348.

[32] Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 36.

[33] Flannery O’Connor, “The Novelist and the Believer,” in Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), 155.

[34] Flannery O’Connor, “The Fiction Writer and His Country,” in Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1969), 32.

[35] This was famously said within the context of her discussion of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. See Flannery O’Connor, “Letter to A,” December 16, 1955.

[36] Flannery O’Connor, “Catholic Novelists and Their Readers,” in Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1969), 179.

[37] Foss, Perils of Governing by Tenderness, 4-5. Also see Thomas Pope, “Flannery O’Connor and the Perils of Governing by Tenderness,” in VoegelinView. November 19, 2014.

[38] Kirk, Roots of American Order, 83-84.

[39] Ibid, 83.

[40] Flannery O’Connor, “A Review of Eric Voegelin’s Order and History, Volume 3, Plato and Aristotle,” in The Bulletin, May 2, 1959.

[41] Flannery O’Connor, “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” in The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971), 420.

[42] Edmonson, “He Thinks He’s Jesus Christ!,” 260.

[43] Russell Kirk, Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: Essays of a Social Critic, rev. ed. (1956; reprinted Chicago: Open Courts, 2000), 56. This line is also cited in Edmonson’s essay.

[44] Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (1953; reprinted New Jersey: Gateway Editions, 2019), 8. The 1953 edition of this book, the one which O’Connor would have been familiar with, was originally titled The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana. The chapter on T.S. Eliot was added in a later edition.

[45] Russell Kirk, “Ten Conservative Principles,” in The University Bookman (date unknown) https://kirkcenter.org/conservatism/ten-conservative-principles/. This article is adapted from The Politics of Prudence, published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in 1993.

[46] Flannery O’Connor, “The Barber,” in The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971), 15-25.

[47] Kirk, “Ten Conservative Principles,” online.

[48] Edmonson, “He Thinks He’s Jesus Christ!,” 261.

[49] Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 472.

[50]  Bryan Michael Santin, “Imagining the American Right,” 82.

[51] Flannery O’Connor, “The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South,” in Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose  (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), 209.

[52] Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 35.

[53] Robert C. Evans, “Flannery O’Connor’s Christian Politics,” St. Bonaventure 55, no. 2 (May 2016): 22-45.

[54] Russell Kirk, “Criminal Character and Mercy,” in The Essential Russell Kirk (Delaware: ISI Books, 2007), 342. This was originally published in Russell Kirk, Redeeming the Time, edited with an introduction by Jeffrey O. Nelson (Delaware: ISI Studies Institute, 1996), 240-253.