Topics

Chesterton on Man, the Religious Animal

VITAL WORKS RECONSIDERED #50

Carl Sundell

GKC asserts that Jesus was not merely one of many great figures in history; rather, He is at the center of all history: past, present, and future.

Snapshots from a Religious & Literary Pilgrimage

A ROUND OF VISITS ACROSS DECAYING CHRISTENDOM

Kenneth Colston

We travel under the pretense of being receptive, really looking for what we think we already know. Yet we are occasionally genuinely surprised.

What Is & What Ought to Be

ON HUMANISM & BEING HUMAN

James V. Schall

Man does not make himself. Rather, as Aristotle remarked, he is already man when he begins to wonder what he is and why he is as he is.

The Many Identities of GKC

Chene Richard Heady

Chesterton believed that the purpose of literature was to engage and change its readers, and that the masses had fundamentally good taste.

The Optimistic Pessimism of G.K. Chesterton

Chene Richard Heady

GKC did believe creation and its Creator are good, but not that the majority of people would always choose rightly or that any merely human structure would endure.

Chesterton's Journey to Orthodoxy

Anne Barbeau Gardiner

It’s hard to believe, but Chesterton was raised a Unitarian and, in 1896, at age 22, still didn’t believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ.

What Is a Patriot to Do?

John C. Chalberg

In Chesterton's view, the English people dominated their history — at least until the rise and ultimate dominance of Parliament.

The Wisdom of Silliness

A HINT OF HEAVEN

Mitchell Kalpakgian

Children, and all the things that delight children (nursery rhymes, fairy tales, imaginative stories), are the antidote to seriousness and all its harmful effects.

Adventure Stories

John C. Chalberg

A history of British “literary converts” is a story of spiritual inspiration over the course of the “age of unbelief” that constitutes the full run of the 20th century.

Falling Off Chesterton's Chariot

ON THE LOSS OF CATHOLIC IDENTITY

Marian E. Crowe

G.K. Chesterton, a Curmudgeon for Our Times

UNDENOMINATIONAL RELIGION & OTHER FOLLIES

Jean Bethke Elshtain

Distributism's Significance for Our Present Social Predicaments

James J. Thompson Jr.

Although Chesterton cultivated a streak of romanticism and delighted in excursions into fantasyland, the source and inspiration for distributism lay elsewhere.

The Chester-Mugg Tradition

Maclin Horton

A gaiety deriv­ed from Christian hope connects the two men and reveals this hope as something greater than the insipid thing its detractors make it out to be.

Chesterton: A Literary Babe Ruth

Pete Sheehan

GKC won not only a popular following but also the respect and admiration — if not always the agreement — of serious intellectual and literary figures of his time.

A Chestertonian Adrift in an Ideological World

CONFESSIONS OF AN APOSTATE

Christopher Derrick

If you favor the cause of orthodoxy or tradition in Catholic faith and morals, you should break the close link that exists between that cause and the cause of the political Right.

G.K. Chesterton’s St. Francis of Assisi

CHRISTIAN CLASSICS REVISITED

James J. Thompson Jr.

St. Francis was that rarest of revolutionaries: one impelled by love rather than by hatred veneered with the catchwords of brotherhood.

Re-evaluating Chesterton

Arthur Livingston

Alzina Stone Dale wrote the first of many books re-eval­uating G.K.C. and elevating him to his deserved place in English letters.