From the Saturday Stumper

I was surprised to see Willa Cather in today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, 57-Down, three letters: “Religion and art, per Cather.” I’ll give away the answer: KIN. From Cather’s essay “Escapism,” published in Commonweal (1936):

Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.

My first guess: ONE. I was thinking of what Godfrey St. Peter tells his students in The Professor’s House (1925):

“Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man the only happiness he has ever had.”

Of course that’s St. Peter speaking, not Cather.

Finishing the Saturday Stumper is still cause for minor self-congratulation. And by the way: if you haven’t read The Professor’s House, you’re missing one of the great American novels.