diff --git a/r/tests/testthat/helper-skip.R b/r/tests/testthat/helper-skip.R
index ce2ad34e9f4..eb69fb55dc4 100644
--- a/r/tests/testthat/helper-skip.R
+++ b/r/tests/testthat/helper-skip.R
@@ -116,11 +116,16 @@ skip_on_python_older_than <- function(python_version) {
     return()
   }
 
-  if (!reticulate::py_available(initialize = TRUE)) {
+  # We want to be careful not to initialize reticulate in this helper function
+  config <- reticulate::py_discover_config()
+
+  # It isn't documented, but config should be NULL when py_discovery_config()
+  # fails to find a valid Python installation
+  if (is.null(config)) {
     skip("Python isn't available")
   }
 
-  if (reticulate::py_version() < python_version) {
+  if (config$version < python_version) {
     skip(paste("Python version:", reticulate::py_version()))
   }
 }