Some have called Flannery O'Connor our only great Christian writer, a Catholic from the Deep South who said her subject was “the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil.”

Forty-five years after her death, how do Flannery O'Connor's views about the South, race, violence, Catholicism, and Christian realism hold up?

"She was a great reader of theology," says Flannery O'Connor biographer Brad Gooch. "She said reading theology made her fiction bolder."

"For Flannery O'Connor, race was indeed the curse of the South in the sense that it was the single most important test which we as white Christians failed."

Reading Flannery O'Connor "was the first time I had read a Christian thinker or writer who I thought was impressive intellectually and challenging."

"How do we save our community?" asks Bishop Rainey Cheeks of Inner Light Ministries in Washington, DC. "We can have all the other theological debates later on, but right now we are in trouble."

When the hajj comes to an end, Muslims will distribute meat to the poor and recall Abraham's willingness to offer his son to God.

Listen to this week's show.

Watch Cardinal Francis George, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice, discuss abortion and health care reform.

"Islam gives Muslims and America the right to defend itself against terrorism, and therefore Muslims should be proud and are proud of their service in the US military," says Imam Yahya Hendi, a Muslim chaplain.