G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)

Author
Apologist
Wit
Champion of Common Sense

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”

Gilbert Keith Chesterton stands to this day as one of the great minds and thinkers, not only in the realm of Christian apologetics and literature but in history. He was, literally, a mountain of a man (6’ 4”, 185 lbs) whose profundity, brilliance and wit was manifested in paradox; the turning and twisting of commonplace thoughts and ideas inside out and upside down until they became meditations reaching to the limits of human thought.

Chesterton was the happiest of warriors, a sparkling and infectiously jolly man whose joie de combat (love of the fight) was tempered by the fact he not only respected other towering intellects with contrary opinions, he was genuinely fond of them as well.

Chesterton was born in the Kensington section of London and, was by his own account a not very bright boy who dabbled in the occult and was such a poor student that a teacher declared that if they opened his head they would not find a brain but a big lump of fat. He did show a talent and skill for illustration and an appreciation for literature but despite university classes in both never took a degree in either field.

In 1901 Chesterton married the young author Frances Alice Blogg but the couple was never able to have children. Alice was very devout Anglican and exceptionally pious; she regularly prayed, read Scripture and was kind to the sick, elderly and children. Like Frances, Chesterton adored children and especially in his later years would write stories and put on plays with and for neighbor children.

After the turn of the century, Chesterton found increased popularity as a journalist and critic and then as an author of books that were both highly entertaining as well as provocative in their stand against the secularization, modernization and what he called the un-common sense of thinking in the new century. He was a deep thinker who loved liberalism but was highly suspicious of liberals, used all forms of science and technology to reach readers and listeners but felt humanity was making a god out of science and technology, he was, basically, a man who not only lived by paradoxes but made them fashionable as a new way of thinking and arriving at truth. For Chesterton, everything was seen through the lens of paradox except God. God is the ultimate simplicity complicated beyond comprehension in the tangled morass of modern thinking. God, for Chesterton, is the ultimate in common sense.

Chesterton’s books, championing not only Orthodox Christianity but orthodoxy itself in its etymological sense meaning “right thinking”. He offered a clear, concise and common sense spiritual path for a new century intent on self-destruction in books like Orthodoxy (1908), Eugenics and Other Evils (1922), Saint Francis of Assisi (1923) The Everlasting Man (1925) and Saint Thomas Aquinas (1933). He also lectured on several continents, gave radio addresses and wrote hundreds of articles for newspapers and journals but his most famous creation was the gentle as a dove but wise as serpent priest sleuth Father Brown. In several anthologies of his beloved detective stories cum morality tales, Father Brown simply but cunningly cuts into the heart of sin and sinners to solve mysteries and prove that God is God and good is good no matter what or where.

Along with his friend and fellow author Hilaire Belloc, Chesterton engaged in debates with some of the most towering intellects of the day who held views diametrically opposed to him, including George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell. These were titanic meeting of minds but, regardless of the outcome, Chesterton always seemed to carry the day due to his infectious good humor, brilliance and affection for his opponents. Chesterton was accused of antisemitism for many years, but, as Rabbi Stephen Wise pointed out, when Nazism was on the rise and Jews were singled out for racial oppression, Chesterton was among the first in England to raise his voice in protest.

Chesterton entered full communion with the Roman Catholic Church in 1922 with his wife Frances following several years later. He died on June 14, 1936 and while talk of his beatification in the Roman Rite has been talked about for years, he actually is venerated in the Episcopal Church with his feast day being the day before, June 13.

The G. K. Chesterton tile was created in 2021. Our 12" X 12" signed and numbered reproduction is created on stretch canvas and is suitable for matting and framing.