In Flannery O’Connor’s 1952 debut novel Wise Blood, an itinerant World War II veteran named Hazel Motes is determined to live a life without belief. He’s a preacher, but he preaches the “Holy Church of Christ Without Christ.”  Yet, for all Motes’s renouncing, Christ remains. He “moves from tree to tree in the back of…

Religious imagery has long been a mainstay in the National’s lyrics, and with the release of the band’s eighth album, I Am Easy to Find, it’s clear that frontman Matt Berninger still sees religious language as the best prism to articulate the ever-present human desire for transcendence and salvation. But if the band’s songs are…