Christian History articles from August 2002

Christian History archives from August 2002

Man at play. (Did you know? Interesting and unusual facts about G.K. Chesterton).(Brief Article)
August 1, 2002... Chesterton's love of theatrics began with childhood puppet shows and remained strong to the end of his life. Pictures of "Top Meadow Productions," the shows he staged at his cottage, depict guests of all ages dressed as eighteenth-century...

Artful dawdler. (Did you know? Interesting and unusual facts about G.K. Chesterton).(Brief Article)
August 1, 2002... Though he made his career as a writer, Chesterton's only formal training was in art. His sketches appeared in his friend Edmund Clerihew Bentley's book Biography for Beginners and, periodically, in G.K.'s Weekly magazine. This sketch, with the...

Lost love. (Did you know? Interesting and unusual facts about G.K. Chesterton).(Brief Article)
August 1, 2002... Way back in 1894, 11 years before he published his first novel, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, Chesterton apparently wrote a semi-autobiographical romance about a character named Basil Howe. The manuscript never saw print, possibly because...

Silent partner. (Did you know? Interesting and unusual facts about G.K. Chesterton).(Brief Article)(Poem)
August 1, 2002... Frances Chesterton faithfully critiqued her husband's work but did not write much of her own. Her only popular piece is the poem (often sung as a carol) "How Far Is It to Bethlehem?" which begins: How far is it to Bethlehem? Not ...

Fan for all seasons. (Did you know? Interesting and unusual facts about G.K. Chesterton).(Brief Article)
August 1, 2002... Chesterton could wax rhapsodic about nearly anything. Essays in his first published collection, The Defendant (1901), celebrate skeletons, ugly things, nonsense, patriotism, babies, and a few more favorites. Later in his career, he wrote an...

Mind leading the minds. (Did you know? Interesting and unusual facts about G.K. Chesterton).(Brief Article)
August 1, 2002... In addition to influencing many Christian writers of his era (see page 30), Chesterton inspired at least two political leaders. In a column published in the United States October 2, 1909, Chesterton complained that the nationalist movement in...

From fiction to truth. (Did you know? Interesting and unusual facts about G.K. Chesterton).(Brief Article)
August 1, 2002... In 1954, young Alec Guinness starred as the title character in Father Brown (in America, The Detective), a loose adaptation of Chesterton's short story "The Blue Cross." The role strayed pretty far from the genuine Father Brown but helped lead...

Diamonds and the rough. (From the Editor).
August 1, 2002... Some historical figures manage to be both famous and obscure. John Newton, the slave trader who wrote "Amazing Grace," has been boiled down to a perennial sermon illustration. The Earl of Sandwich lives on only as a deli order. G.K. Chesterton...

Alternative interpretations. (From the Readers).
August 1, 2002... On page 12, James Beverley states, "Then, according to the Qur'an, Muhammad and his angel companions were taken by ladder (called a miraj) to the seventh heaven." The Qur'an 17.1 speaks only of the isra' (that is, night journey) from the holy...

More sorrow, bad faith. (From the Readers).
August 1, 2002... Nowhere did you discuss the suffering of millions of Christians living under Islam today. Nearly every Muslim country is saturated with anti-Christian propaganda. This creates an environment of hate in which thousands of Christians are...

Missing peace. (From the Readers).(Brief Article)
August 1, 2002... In "Justice and Peace" (p. 43), J. Dudley Woodberry is quoted as saying, "As long as there's a sense of being threatened by the West, or by secularization, or by injustice, there's going to be militancy." I must demur. The history of Islamic...

The road to Rome: Chesterton's spiritual journey.
August 1, 2002... At the place where the roads meet there is no doubt of the convergence. A man may think all sorts of things, most of them honest and many of them true, about the right way to turn in the maze at Hampton Court. But he does not think he is in the...

Issues & G.K.'s answers: he read his times and wrote about times to come.
August 1, 2002... Much of what G.K. Chesterton wrote was timeless. "He is not of our time, but of all times," wrote A.G. Gardiner, editor of the London Daily News. More than 100 years after Chesterton first started writing for the Daily News, readers...

The woman question: Chesterton's ideas on this controversial subject reflected the strengths of the two women he knew best.(Brief Article)
August 1, 2002... At 26 years old, G.K. Chesterton wrote that the world in 1901 was "full of the trampling of totally new forces." One of these "new forces" was commonly called the Woman Question: Should women be allowed to receive higher education? Should...

Genius with a message: every piece in Chesterton's immense body of published work bears the imprint of his soul.
August 1, 2002... Critics over the past century have sought to identify the fundamental Chesterton. He offers an answer in Orthodoxy: "The central Christian theology... is the best root of energy and sound ethics." Indeed, theology informs and connects...

The un-apologist: oblivious to convention, Chesterton launched a bold campaign to point a mad world back toward truth.
August 1, 2002... In one of his most important books, Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton claims that he is doing spiritual autobiography, not apologetics. He goes so far as to declare: "I never read a line of Christian apologetics." Yet in this and many other works, he...

The mystery deepens: with Father Brown, a sleuth who plumbed hearts, Chesterton redefined the "whodunit.".
August 1, 2002... Nearly everyone agrees that Chesterton achieved something extraordinary with his Father Brown stories. Yet after literally hundreds of commentators have had their say, there is still no consensus about what his achievement was or in what ways...

The world made strange: Chesterton's unique theology reveals what Christians know, but forget to believe.
August 1, 2002... G.K. Chesterton did not think of himself as a theologian. In his era, Catholic theology was still the domain of a highly trained clerical elite. Granting the title "theologian" to a journalist in those days would have been as outrageous as...

Economics after God's own image: appalled by the "slavery" of the British working class, Chesterton joined Hilaire Belloc in promoting a brave new ideal.
August 1, 2002... One night in 1900, deep within one of those gray British metropolises that he once called "the interior of a labyrinth of lifeless things," G.K. Chesterton discovered a kindred spirit. At the Mont Blanc Restaurant in London's Soho district, a...

Chesterton today: timeless commentary on timely issues.(Brief Article)
August 1, 2002... A COMMON HESITATION in our day touching the use of extreme convictions is a sort of notion that extreme convictions, specially upon cosmic matters, have been responsible in the past for the thing which is called bigotry. But a very small amount...

Beloved enemies: Chesterton clashed with many leading intellectuals of his day. He also counted them as friends. (The Gallery).
August 1, 2002... MISGUIDED SUPERMAN FAN George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950 "He is something of a pagan," said Chesterton of George Bernard Shaw, "and like many other pagans, he is a very fine man." The assessment hints at the complexity of their...

Exactly the opposite: Chesterton is seldom what we expect but often what we need. (The Link Interview).(Interview)
August 1, 2002... A conversation with Philip Yancey. Philip Yancey credits G.K. Chesterton with helping to save his faith from a bitter encounter with fundamentalism. The power of Chesterton's work also pointed Yancey toward a writing career that has...

G.K. Chesterton. (Recommended Resources).(Bibliography)
August 1, 2002... From his pen One longtime fan of Chesterton acknowledges that learning to read him is a bit like learning a second language. Once the language is learned, though, the rewards start pouring in. The best place to begin reading Chesterton...