August 3

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Flannery O'Connor, George Freeman Bragg, and W.E.B. Dubois

Author

David Barnhart
August 03, 2025

Funnel web in a cedar tree, 2008. Photo by Angela Barnhart.

Today marks the death, in 2008, of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian author who challenged totalitarian government and articulated a nuanced theology of human evil. His book The Gulag Archipelago detailed the ideological system that made such cruelty possible. 

Today also marks the death, in 1964, of Flannery O’Connor, a Southern author and Roman Catholic whose writing also explored themes of good and evil. 

Today is a feast day in the Episcopal Church for George Freeman Bragg and W.E.B. Dubois (whose birthday we observed on February 23). George Freeman Bragg was a priest, journalist, and civil rights activist who served the Maryland area, advocated for Black congregations, and fought against post-Reconstruction Jim Crow laws. 

Reflection: 

One of Solzhenitsyn’s most famous quotes: 

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

And particularly important for those of us confronting our current evil regime: 

“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”

Flannery O’Connor’s description of the place I’ve grown up and spent all of my life: 

“I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.”

Prayer: Lord, it has become clear that our whole nation is not Christ-centered, but Christ-haunted. Strip away the illusions from our cultural Christianity and confront us with the Good News that liberates all people. Amen.