By Rebecca Dillingham
“What has given the South her identity are those beliefs and qualities which she has absorbed from the Scriptures and from her own history of defeat and violation: 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,” remarked author Flannery O’Connor in “The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South.”
“Saint Gregory wrote that every time the sacred text describes a fact, it reveals a mystery,” she continued. “And this is what the fiction writer, on his lower level, attempts to do also.”
I’m no fiction writer nor am I Catholic, but I am a journalist and an Orthodox Christian. And I am Southern born and bred just like Ms. O’Connor, so I can relate to O’Connor’s (little-o) orthodox sentiments, on both a cultural and a spiritual level.
She noted, “Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. That is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety.”
“But approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn’t convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.”
Like the fine modern writer Casey Chalk points out, “O’Connor’s literary objective was not to tell the world about all the good, honest people in the South. Her aim was thoroughly practical, while metaphysical: to persuade her readers of their sinfulness and desperate need for divine grace. … Her stories are consequently filled with unadmirable characters meant to stoke our consciences into repentance.”
While “O’Connor’s literature is a labor of love for her native South (and the world), preaching the reality of grace in a land marred by sin, pride, violence,” Chalk adds, today’s Dixie is a place “desperate for something solid and grounded, especially as we rip up and tear down monuments to our once beloved heroes. … Without saints both secular and religious, our catechesis in right living is terribly impoverished.”
We Southerners are so blessed that many of our heroes — like the venerable Lee and Jackson whose birthdays we celebrated in January — weren’t just remarkable generals, fearless soldiers, and humble leaders, but they were also pious Christians. In fact, I think it is the unwavering faith of much of Dixie’s patrimony that is really the main driver of the Southern cultural genocide. All other cultural-Marxist justifications are ancillary.
“Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic,” O’Connor confirmed. And to the rest of dead American society, simply put: the South’s most grotesque feature is our faith.
Thus, it is we devout Dixians who have become today’s freaks precisely because we view man through the theological lens. And there is no love or even empathy for us, for we are traditionalists in a postmodern world, a culture-loving collective stuck in a presentist bad dream, a Jesus people navigating the treacherous seas of a post-Christian dystopia. A thorn in the side of “progress.” Good.
However, due to the reconstructions imposed upon of our forebearers, and those we Southerners and our progeny still face at present, we have become a fragmented and atomized people. It is what writer Walt Garlington calls the “schism in the Southern soul.” Therefore, I offer up a prayer for Dixie’s Land — a “good thing to be stuck with,” as O’Connor would say — so that all the “freaks” will be made whole through loving God.
“For One’s Earthly and Temporal Homeland”
“O Lord Jesus Christ, eternal God, who within time hast become perfect man from the womb of the Virgin: from thy heavenly throne hearken to our prayer for this land. Prepare it for us as a temporal homeland such that we may easily and safely travel therefrom to our true homeland with thee. Give strength to thy people and bless them with peace. As Joseph prospered when he sojourned in Egypt, so prosper the Orthodox Church and her leaders during our sojourn in this land. Adorn our earthly rulers with the faith of Ehud, the hope of Barak, the steadfast trust of Jephthah, the holiness of Samuel, the prudence of Moses, the meekness of David, the wisdom of Solomon, the courage of Hezekiah, the zeal of Josiah, and the nobility of Zerubbabel.
Correct the laws of this land to guide aright men’s deeds and so make their hearts upright, and let us no longer shed innocent blood and be putrid with it, defiling ourselves with the works of darkness. Make our households to be like flocks of sheep, and our children like olive trees around our table. Go forth, O God, with our armed forces, protecting those that serve in them by the power of thy Cross. Grant peace to our cities, towns, and countryside, and by thy mighty right hand and wisdom support and guide the police and all those charged with enforcing the law. Enlighten with the true light of the Gospel the minds of all educators of this land, to whom we commend the instruction of ourselves and our children. Send us rain and sunshine, and also snow and wind from thy storehouses, all in due season. Make our harvests bountiful and multiply them to feed the poor of our land and of the whole world. Make honest the scales of the merchants and bankers, and make the earthly economy of this land ever more to reflect, even as in a mirror darkly, the supernal economy of thy Father. Guide aright the hands of all doctors, nurses, and other healers in this land, and grant that they may employ their arts for the sake of health and life in this world leading unto true life and salvation, and not for the sake of death and the devil.
Have mercy and strengthen our bishops and priests ever to offer prayers at evening, morning, and noonday, and to serve the holy Liturgy in righteousness and purity, so that all who repent and turn to thee may partake of thy Flesh and Blood and so become one Body with thee in thy holy Church. Bless our monasteries and those who dwell there, and multiply in our land them that aspire to the angelic life on earth. Hearken, Lord Jesus, and we shall give thanks to thy holy Name and bless thy wondrous works, proclaiming them with rejoicing. For thou art the Son of the heavenly Father who rulest also the seas and the dry land, and thine is the dominion, together with the same Father and thine All-holy Spirit, our King and Comforter. Sweet is thy mercy, O Lord, from age to age. Amen.”
— Supplication found in “Orthodox Christian Prayers,” St. Tikhon’s Monastery Press, 2019
Rebecca Dillingham is a co-founder of the Ludwell Orthodox Fellowship. Essay originally published January 23, 2022, at Dissident Mama.
