An American novel of 1967

In William Stryon's timely novel of 1967, "The Confessions of Nat Turner", you immediately know you're in the presence of a superior being when the main character Nat admits, near the beginning of the book, that he can no longer pray. A religious man, a preacher and a slave, before being imprisoned for leading a slave rebellion, Nat cannot "recall when the ability to pray had left me–one month, two months, perhaps even more. It might have been some consolation, at least, had I known the reason why this power had deserted me; but I was denied even this knowledge and there seemed no way at all to bridge the gulf between myself and God."

The day before yesterday, on November 1, 2016, arsonists set fire to a black church in Mississippi. I'm not sure what to make of this, other than Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in 1833, which William Stryon wrote a book about in 1967, and a predominantly black church in Mississippi was torched the other day as reported in the New York Times.