Imagine the look of surprise on the faces of Baylor’s founders at the sight of five Dominican priests calling themselves The Hillbilly Thomists playing bluegrass music in long white robes at Jones Concert Hall. On September 24th, the bluegrass-chart-topping band hosted a concert at Baylor as part of the Baylor Nicea Symposium, hosted through the Institute for Faith and Learning. These friars from the Catholic Order of Preachers, founded in 1216, used guitars, a fiddle, a banjo, even a metal washboard to make a joyful chorus. Three hundred people broke the Baylor rule against dancing that ended only 50 years ago, all on their feet, dancing and clapping. With the songs “Bourbon, Bluegrass, and the Bible” and “Holy Ghost Power,” they got our dry campus rocking like an old-time revival. Very old-time, as in 13th century.
Fr. Justin, the vocalist and guitar player for the band, explained that bluegrass is “a fitting vehicle for the Gospel because of its joy.” This joy was apparent. Children, professors, and college students clapped and danced to the lyrics of “Heaven or Tennessee” and “Weight of Eternal Glory.” They had come to preach the gospel through joy and bluegrass. Their voices shouting in falsetto highs and to a low bass, were as far away from auto-tune as possible. For Fr. Justin, this “earthiness” found in bluegrass makes the proclamation of grace only more clear.
According to Fr. Justin this “earthiness” can be found in their namesake, Flannery O’Connor, the original Hillbilly Thomist. She was a Catholic Appalachian oddity living on a farm in the mountains of Georgia. She wrote bizarre stories of God in the lives of hillbillies in the 1940s and 1950s. As Fr. Justin explained, O’ Conner sought “to explore the way grace breaks into the world and often disrupts it, she wanted to do that through earthy examples in down-home, kind of southern experience; she loved painting those pictures of how grace moves in that.”
Many Christians are tempted to withdraw from the world in pursuit of God. Yet Fr. Justin believes that Christ has expanded our choices. “We inherited original sin, but grace is the very form that restores the integrity of our nature, body, and soul. Grace makes us more human.”
This revival of grace, Fr. Justin explained, is how we can balance following Christ while still living in the world. The band harmonizes this in their music. He explained that “there’s a temptation going towards one side of our human nature, angelism, I need to be perfect, or on the other side, the animal, the hedonist.” Many Christians are tempted to withdraw from the world in pursuit of God. Yet Fr. Justin believes that Christ has expanded our choices. “We inherited original sin, but grace is the very form that restores the integrity of our nature, body, and soul. Grace makes us more human. That is our nature. We are human.” These Dominicans believe Christ’s grace completes us and fulfills us. Christ wishes for us to be what we already are: human beings.
One of The Hillbilly Thomist’s most popular songs, “Bourbon, Bluegrass, and the Bible,” celebrates grace in everyday life. They are“talking about grace and talking about sin,” finding revival in the middle of the world. In the song, God speaks to the Southern protagonist who discovers through his banjo and Bible a revival of grace, and a desire to live for the other side. Flannery O’Connor believed that the human thing is beautiful because grace transforms everything. O’Connor believed that if we look past the human to find God, we are missing Him, and if in the sinner we only see sin, we miss again.
O’Connor believed that if we look past the human to find God, we are missing Him, and if in the sinner we only see sin, we miss again.
O’Connor illustrates this in her famous story “Parker’s Back.” The protagonist, E.B. Parker, burst into Sarah Ruth’s life in an explosion of curses and tattoos. The pair couldn’t be more different. Sarah Ruth’s plain face and judgmental eyes, “forever sniffing up sin,” make her incapable of ever finding grace in this world. Because of his worldliness and her fixation on sin, both think of God as absent. To her, his tattoos are “a heap of vanities” because they are colorful, while to Parker they awaken the uniqueness of a human person. He covers himself in tattoos, everywhere besides his back, for “he does not readily see it himself.” He has reserved a space for the view of others. Despite their differences, the couple marries. Parker suffers months of her judgmental and sharp ways. After falling into a trance-like state and crashing a tractor, he feels he must fill the empty space on his back with “God.” On returning to Sarah Ruth, Parker uses his full name, “Obadiah Elihue,” “God’s servant.” He hopes Sarah Ruth will love the image of God on his back. But instead she repeats, “It ain’t anybody I know.” She screams in anger at him, “Idolatry! Inflaming yourself with idols,” and beats him senseless. O’Connor shows that the sinner Parker finds Christ moving in the world, yet his wife is unwilling to see Christ in anything. She can’t see grace in odd places because she has limited grace to her narrow view.
The Hillbilly Thomists want us to see Christ in everything and in ourselves. In our strangeness, quirks, fears, and ugliness, we are living for the other side. Like Parker, we are a canvas for the image of Christ. The same can be said for these priests who seem so bizarre on stage: they are truly letting Christ transform their talents into instruments of grace. Fr. Justin believes that this idea of transformational grace should fill us with joy. When I asked Fr. Justin how Christians should go about enjoying life, he responded excitedly. “Go out on Saturday night and be joyful. But how do we do it virtuously? Grace lets us.” This sentiment is echoed in the lyrics of their song “Saturday Night,” where they sang “Like old Hank Williams, I saw the light / because I found salvation on a Saturday night.” The band believes that to live “for the other side” requires celebrating well: dancing and singing with God’s creation.
The Hillbilly Thomists want us to see Christ in everything and in ourselves. In our strangeness, quirks, fears, and ugliness, we are living for the other side. Like Parker, we are a canvas for the image of Christ.
Yet joy is not the whole story of our lives. Sorrow is evident in both our lives and the gospels. Does the cheerful tone of bluegrass miss the sorrow of life? Fr. Justin said no: “the lyrics [of bluegrass] are sad and are about even death, but in a jubilant register. I think that’s weird, but also Christian, that there is suffering and even great suffering and suffering of death, that final suffering.” Fr. Justin shows that life and joy and sorrow are mixed in the gospels. He continues: “we are confident in the Lord’s victory over death and that our souls will go on. So to live in grace is to live in the Lord. He has us on the next side and the next part of the journey. The virtue of hope really comes in here.”
The Hillbilly Thomist’s song “Veronica” tells the story of Saint Veronica, the woman who wiped the face of suffering Christ on his walk to Calvary, and saw his suffering face appear on her cloth. They pray that, like her, someday they “will see him face to face.” Suffering always graces our lives, and as the band said in the concert, “Christ’s suffering allows us to see and be taken to heaven so that we may be like him and fulfill who we really are.” Christ’s sacrifice brings a harmony to our sorrow and joy. This hope “strengthens the soul to cling to God and to go towards what is good, even when things are difficult.” The Hillbilly Thomists are calling all who live under the weight of eternal glory, regardless of your strengths or interests, to live for the other side.
The Hillbilly Thomists, an unlikely troupe of friars, bring together theology and music to preach a grace that redeems man in all his strangeness. They sing that we must “live for the other side” by being truly ourselves. The strange and beautiful will be redeemed.
“When it’s a question of love and survival
Bourbon, bluegrass, and the Bible.”
