are not capable of appreciating the beauty that surrounds them, but the grandmother is and does.

There are other hints that the grandmother is not a lost cause: she plays appropriately and fondly with the baby in the car; she won't let the children throw their trash out of the car; she asks her son Bailey if her would dance with her, and when he rudely will not, she "pretend[s] she [i]s dancing in her chair." These hints tell us that the grandmother has an underlying humanity that the rest of the family lacks.

Once the car wreck happens, O'Connor shifts the mood so that the flaws in each character are magnified. The children are even more bratty, Bailey's rage-filled ineptness comes out, and the children's mother continues to be a cipher until it is too late, dooming her baby who is joined to her at the hip. The grandmother characteristically tries to charm the Misfit by flattering him that she knows he is a "good man at heart" and "not a bit common."

As things deteriorate, the grandmother repeatedly mentions Jesus to the Misfit and tells him that he should pray, but he tells her he does not want any help because he is "doing all right by [him]self." While the grandmother's understanding of Jesus and prayer remains tenuous, O'Connor has the Misfit puzzle through a deceptively simple theological monologue, where he concludes that if Jesus is who He says He is, there is nothing to do but "thow everything away and follow Him," and if He isn't, there is nothing left but hedonism coupled with "meanness." This is a contrast between the Law of Nature and the Law of Grace.

When the grandmother sinks dizzily in the ditch, she ends up in a praying position "with her legs twisted under her." Seeing the Misfit's distraught face, the grandmother's "head clear[s] for an instant," and she reaches out to the Misfit as if he is one of her children. Here, O'Connor is telling us that the moment of moral clarity the grandmother has experienced has redeemed her soul.

Often, O'Connor puts her very flawed protagonists in excruciating situations so that—in their shock—the transcendent can enter. The Misfit hints at this when he says the grandmother would have been a good woman if there had been "somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

Although "A Good Man is Hard to Find" seems religious only at the end, in fact O'Connor methodically builds a story of a very flawed woman who has an epiphany of compassion when faced with gruesome death. Religion is essential to this story.

Religion seems to come to the fore toward the end of the story, as the grandmother tells the Misfit that he should pray to Jesus for help. The Misfit, however, blames Jesus for his problems because he feels that Jesus "'thrown everything off balance'" by being accepting of such a severe punishment (the crucifixion) when he had, in fact, done nothing wrong to deserve it. This acceptance unbalanced the scales of justice in the Misfit's eyes and seems to have made it possible, even acceptable, for him—a man who had done nothing wrong—to be punished and imprisoned for the murder of his father. Thus, the Misfit does not look to Jesus as a figure who can or even would help him, and he finds no comfort in religion, unlike the grandmother.

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a deeply religious story about grace and redemption, written by a devout Catholic. It demonstrates O'Connor's belief that the Holy Spirit can break into the worst of situations. 

The story begins as a completely ordinary tale of a 1950s family going on a vacation. Bailey, the father, travels with his mother, known as the Grandmother, along with his wife and two children. The Grandmother can be difficult, and she demands a detour along a deserted dirt road through the woods, where she believes she can show her grandchildren an old Southern mansion.

Instead of the mansion, the family meets a killer, called the Misfit, and his gang. They systematically murder the family, until only the Grandmother is left.  Disoriented, terrified and desperate, she tries to appeal to the Misfit to spare her by telling him "Jesus will help you." Her words trigger a response in the Misfit, who has thought about Jesus' life and teachings. "Jesus thrown everything off balance," he says, going on to explain that "if He did what he said, there's nothing for you to do but throw everything away and follow him." However, he continues, if Jesus didn't do what he said (raise people from death), there's "no pleasure but meanness." Clearly, the Misfit has chosen the second path. Like most secular people, he won't believe in Jesus because he didn't see Jesus with his own eyes:"If I had of been there I would have known and wouldn't be like I am now," he says.

As the Misfit expresses his doubts, the Grandmother, a completely ordinary person, experiences an extraordinary moment of grace. She suddenly sees the Misfit, the man who has just murdered her entire family, as a full human being, worthy of love:"Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!" she says to him. She reaches out a hand and tries to touch him to complete the connection. The Misfit springs back and shoots her.  

The Misfit murders the Grandmother, but he can't erase the moment of grace and connection between them--or the fact that she dies in a state of grace and redemption due to the extraordinary act of loving him, a killer, if only for a second. He can't even find the ordinary pleasure he usually has in killing people: "it's no real pleasure in life," he says, the last words of the story. Will he also be touched by God's grace? We don't know, but in O'Connor's universe, miracles are possible.

Flannery O’Connor acknowledged the influence of her Catholic faith on her writing. The characters in the story cannot be neatly separated into good or evil. Although the Misfit and his crew are obviously the villains, as they commit cold-blooded murders, the grandmother is a far from a sympathetic character. Not only does she voice many opinions, but her indiscreet behavior calls attention to her family and precipitates their deaths. With this complexity, O’Connor calls attention to the way that faith unevenly motivates people and, especially, forces them to contemplate their own mortality.

The grandmother considers herself virtuous, but she suffers from the sin of pride. Her selfishness results in the family literally getting lost, with the implication that they are spiritually lost—damned—as well. Her insistence of her own goodness leads her to judge the Misfit. When she tells him she knows he is “a good boy,” the underlying message is that she herself is good, which authorizes her to judge him. The Misfit condemns her for her hypocrisy, and even suggests that she is sacrilegious or heretical in evoking Jesus. To him, she has already died, and “Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead.”

A symbolically inverted image of the Madonna is also presented. While the grandmother has just consigned her own family to being executed, she tries to claim maternity to the Misfit: “You're one of my own children." Failing to understand that this will alienate him further, she belatedly tries to behave as a true Christian.

In order to understand the part religion plays in the story, you must first understand a little about the author. Flannery O'Conner was a devout Roman Catholic and considered the idea of "grace" as a "divine pardon from God" that is freely available from God just by asking for it. Faith is undeserved and comes at a moment of great insight.  In the story, the Grandmother, who is a decidedly unlikeable character, obtains grace at her death. As she is dying from three gunshots in the chest fired by the Mifit, she reaches out to him and sees him as one of her own children. The Misfit replies that "she would of been a good woman ... if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

To O'Connor, this recognition is an indication of grace. Ironically, one of the least deserving and most disliked character in the story is the one who achieves grace. For O'Connor, this means that grace is available for everyone, even those who seem the least deserving of it.

As the family leaves on its trip to Florida, we get a glimpse of the grandmother as she sits in the car ready for the journey:

Her collar and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets. . . . In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.

Throughout the story, the grandmother, who becomes the central character, equates a person's external attributes with his or her values.  In short, if someone is dressed well and acts well, the grandmother assumes that person is a good person, goodness that also implies religiousness.

When, through the series of incredible mis-adventures, the family is at the mercy of The Misfit and his colleagues, and she sees that her family--with her son, Bailey, first--is going to be executed by The Misfit's men, the grandmother tries to convince The Misift that she perceives his inherent goodness:

'I just know you're a good man,' she said desperately.  'You're not a bit common!'

One can argue, of course, that the grandmother is making a cynical attempt to keep herself alive, and she probably is, but she is also reacting to The Misfit's ostensibly kind and polite behavior--even as he orders the killing of Bailey and his son.  The grandmother assumes that The Misfit's outward behavior mirrors some inherent goodness within.

After their prolonged discussion about The Misfit's confusion about Jesus--in which he appears to be genuinely troubled by whether or not Jesus raised the dead--the grandmother reaches out to him and touches him on the shoulder and says

'Why you're one of my babies.  You're one of my own children!"

At his point, clearly the grandmother has had an epiphany, a religious experience, that takes her from the superficiality of her belief that people who act good are good to a true expression of empathy for The Misfit.

Flannery O'Connor once said that her fiction often showed the action of grace in territory held by the devil.  In the case of "Good Country People," the action of grace occurs when the grandmother reaches out to The Misfit, a man who still hold's the devil's territory.

The grandmother is portrayed as an intolerant hypocrite who believes that she is morally superior to others and is quick to pass judgment without turning a critical eye on herself. The grandmother appears to be a morally upright Christian woman who can identify the good in others. However, the grandmother's comments and actions reveal that she is a self-righteous hypocrite. The grandmother chastises John Wesley for criticizing Georgia, sneaks Pitty Sing into the car against her son's wishes, lies to the children about the secret panel, and does not admit that she has made a mistake when she instructs Bailey to take a wrong turn. The grandmother's reaction to her family being murdered is also peculiar, as she neglects to beg for her family's safety.

Despite her appearance and self-assured personality, the grandmother does not exercise the values of Christianity. She is not tolerant, compassionate, loving, or honest. Instead, the grandmother is selfish, dishonest, and intolerant. Overall, the grandmother's self-righteous, judgmental personality reveals that she is a religious pretender who does not practice the fundamental principles of Christianity.

With a question such as this one, I would suggest you think very carefully about the characterization of the grandmother across the course of the story. Keep in mind, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a story that revolves around the epiphany at its end, with the grandmother experiencing a profound, if momentary, shift in her personality in the moment she faces death. How has her attitude changed in this moment, and what does this contrast suggest about the nature of religious attitudes overall?

As you state in your question, the grandmother is Christian, but it is worth asking the degree to which her faith is genuine. If it isn't genuine, to what degree does it exist merely as an expression of her social pretensions? The grandmother is vain, proud, opinionated, and judgmental, and these qualities do seem to be expressed in her attitudes towards and about religion. She is fixated on the notion of social respectability, and it is through this lens that her attitudes on religion seem to have largely been expressed.

This brings us now to the ending of the story, where the Grandmother encounters the Misfit, with his bleak and tortured nihilism on life. This amounts to a hopeless situation for the grandmother, with she and her family facing execution, and yet, in this moment, she experiences profound empathy with her would-be killer. Thus, O'Connor writes:

His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother's head cleared for an instant. She saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he was going to cry and she murmured, "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!" She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. ("A Good Man is Hard to Find")

I would suggest that this scene reflects the radical picture of Christian love presented in the Gospels. For so much of her life, the grandmother has rejected that radical calling, clinging instead to her social pretensions, but here, at the end of her life, she reaches out to her killer, seeing the humanity in him.

It is within this contrast between the grandmother's attitude throughout so much of the story and her attitude at its end that much of O'Connor's thoughts on Christianity and religious attitudes are expressed.

Although the grandmother relies on religion to save her in the end, she doesn't exhibit any tenets of Christlike behavior when her own life doesn't hang in the balance. She proves herself to be racist, judgmental, and dishonest in the car ride toward her eventual death.

Yet when she is faced with the possibility that the Misfit might murder her, she turns to religion, and asks the Misfit if he ever prays. Although her daily life renounces the commandments of Christ through her actions, she believes that the Misfit has a personal relationship with Christ. This belief is in spite of his actions, as he sends her family members to their deaths in the woods right in front of her.

The grandmother then tells the Misfit that he must be a follower of Christ because he has "good blood." Somehow through his appearance and demeanor, he seems to have a gentlemanly background. She equates the love of Christ as extending only to a particular and advantaged segment of society.

The Misfit has evaluated the Gospel, however. He tells the Grandmother that Jesus shouldn't have raised a man from the dead and that he threw "everything off balance" when he did so.

The grandmother then has a moment of self-doubt, questioning aloud whether Jesus truly ever did raise anyone from the dead. The Misfit responds that he wasn't there and therefore has no certainty himself. Since he has no proof, he is going to "enjoy" his "minutes" on earth by "killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness."

The hypocrisy of false religion is therefore a theme that evolves in this story. The grandmother uses a religion she doesn't truly embrace in a desperate attempt to save her own life, and not even to spare the lives of her family members. In contrast, the Misfit is forthright about his disbelief His actions and words are in agreement with each other.