G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was one of the greatest thinkers and authors of the twentieth century. A major influence on C.S. Lewis, Chesterton wrote one hundred books, two hundred short stories, four thousand newspaper essays, and more—all very thought provoking and often humorous.

Arguing With Chesterton

By |2023-02-16T10:12:22-06:00February 15th, 2023|Categories: G.K. Chesterton, Joseph Pearce, Senior Contributors|

The difference between an argument and a quarrel is the difference between heaven and hell. An argument for something is the expression of a line of reasoning in support of a proposition. It is in this spirit that I dare to pick an argument with G.K. Chesterton himself, confident that it could never become a [...]

The Comedy of Christmas

By |2022-12-26T15:37:32-06:00December 26th, 2022|Categories: Christianity, Christmas, Culture, G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, Joseph Pearce, Timeless Essays|

The joy of Bethlehem points through purgatorial sorrow to the glory of paradise. This is why the Comedy of Christmas brings laughter, even in this vale of tears and its veil of fears. This past semester at Aquinas College in Nashville, I have had the joy of teaching a whole course on the works of [...]

The God in the Cave

By |2023-12-24T08:26:36-06:00December 24th, 2022|Categories: Christendom, Christianity, Christmas, Existence of God, G.K. Chesterton, Myth, Philosophy, Religion, Timeless Essays, Truth|

Christ was not only born on the level of the world, but even lower than the world. The first act of the divine drama was enacted, not only on no stage set up above the sightseer, but on a dark and curtained stage sunken out of sight. This sketch of the human story began in [...]

A Chestertonian Thanksgiving

By |2023-11-22T22:56:49-06:00November 23rd, 2022|Categories: Christianity, G.K. Chesterton, Thanksgiving, Timeless Essays|Tags: |

On Thanksgiving, I wish to cherish G.K. Chesterton’s magnanimity for our fellow, but often frustrating, man. He said, “We need a rally of the really human things; will which is morals, memory which is tradition, culture which is the mental thrift of our fathers.” What follows is a cornucopia of aphorisms and excerpts from a [...]

The Dark Side of Chesterton: Gargoyles and Grotesques

By |2022-09-23T18:03:22-05:00September 23rd, 2022|Categories: Books, David Deavel, G.K. Chesterton, Senior Contributors|

Though an apostle of joy and common sense, Chesterton’s work, especially his stories, has hideous and frightening images running through from beginning to end. What is the place of the grotesque, the nihilistic, and evil itself in his work? The Dark Side of Chesterton: Gargoyles and Grotesques, by John C. Tibbetts, with a foreword by [...]

Education as if Truth Mattered

By |2022-08-25T12:54:22-05:00August 24th, 2022|Categories: C.S. Lewis, Education, Evelyn Waugh, Featured, G.K. Chesterton, Great Books, Joseph Pearce, StAR, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|

If the twenty-first century is to produce more great men and more great books, it will have to restore a true education; and a true education is an education as if truth mattered. The title of this essay, “Education as if Truth Mattered,” is taken from the subtitle of Christopher Derrick’s book, Escape from Scepticism: [...]

A People Without History: T.S. Eliot’s Critique of Evolutionary History

By |2022-08-21T15:07:55-05:00August 21st, 2022|Categories: Benjamin Lockerd, G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, History, Poetry, Senior Contributors, T.S. Eliot, The Imaginative Conservative, Timeless Essays|

H.G. Wells sought to free humanity from the “bondage” of tradition, but T.S. Eliot saw history not as an evolutionary movement, but a return to the past. While T.S. Eliot never made any comments critical of Charles Darwin or his theory of the evolution of species, he was quite critical of various popularized versions of [...]

Chesterton on Progressivism and Barbarism

By |2022-07-06T21:37:15-05:00July 6th, 2022|Categories: Catholicism, G.K. Chesterton, Modernity, Progressivism|

As G.K. Chesterton observed what was happening all around him in England, he was led to conclude that there were historical moments when what he termed “over-civilization” and what he termed “barbarism” were close to becoming one and the same thing. Virtually the same thing might be said of America today. Just where is our [...]

The English Way

By |2022-06-22T17:26:46-05:00June 21st, 2022|Categories: Books, Bradley J. Birzer, Catholicism, Christianity, Christopher Dawson, G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Sainthood, Senior Contributors, St. John Fisher, St. Thomas More|

The Catholic Church canonized Saints Thomas More and John Fisher in 1935, only two years after the appearance of "The English Way," a work edited by one of the most important Christian humanists and publishers of the twentieth century, Maisie Ward, and which looks at the lives, ideas, and deaths of the great Roman Catholic [...]

The Privilege of Little Words and Mighty Swords

By |2022-06-09T22:38:55-05:00June 9th, 2022|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christian Humanism, Christianity, Essential, G.K. Chesterton, History, J.R.R. Tolkien, T.S. Eliot, Timeless Essays|

Let not future generations say of us: We slept. Instead, may they remember us as those who fought the good fight for the Logos and for humanity. Let it be said that in the twenty-first century we took up either of our mythically-laden swords and wielded them with all the force imaginable. My talk today [...]

G.K. Chesterton on the Family

By |2022-06-07T12:29:37-05:00June 7th, 2022|Categories: Books, Culture War, G.K. Chesterton|

G.K. Chesterton prophesied that the attack on the family would intensify, and his writings were an attempt to provide ammunition for those who would be on hand when his prophecy came true. And now we have Dale Ahlquist to give us the best of Chesterton's writings on the family in what we hope will prove [...]

Christmas Dinner With G.K. Chesterton

By |2021-12-21T15:15:34-06:00December 21st, 2021|Categories: Christmas, G.K. Chesterton|

As we look forward to Christmas dinner with our families, you may be surprised to learn that someone else who always enjoyed his Christmas dinner claimed to be a vegetarian. That someone was the portly G. K. Chesterton. How could that be? After all, he was anything but a slim, trim fellow. And yet by [...]

G.K. Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy” and Conservatism

By |2021-10-08T13:53:53-05:00October 8th, 2021|Categories: Books, Christianity, G.K. Chesterton, Michael De Sapio, Orthodoxy, Senior Contributors|

Turning the popular negative connotation of “orthodoxy” on its head, G.K. Chesterton argues that orthodoxy is anything but dull and musty, but on the contrary exciting and adventuresome. In 1952, C.S. Lewis did a great service to the world in producing Mere Christianity, his account of the fundamentals of Christian belief for a popular audience. It [...]

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