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August 21, 2005

G. K. Chesterton Inst. for Faith & Culture

In mid-June I attended the American Chesterton Society's three day conference held annually at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN. Dale Ahlquist, the executive director of the society, is not only one of the funniest people I've met in a long time, he's an exceptionally good speaker.

I also had the good fortune to begin a friendship with Stratford Caldecott, who was one of the other speakers and in (not just) my opinion, one of the most intriguing. (Order tapes here) When not speaking at the conference, he and his wife are Directors of the Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture in Oxford and edit Second Spring: An International Journal of Faith & Culture.

For those of you not drawn towards the deeper end of the pool in Catholic thought, this may not be of interest. But if you want to play with some ideas from the great mind of G. K. Chesterton, you can dive deep here, and you might even find that the water's just fine.

From their "about us" page:

Chesterton's call for a deepened moral and social imagination speaks loudly to the cultural crises of our own time. His vision was compelling partly because of its coherence: he recognized that heart and hearth, work and worth, were of a piece. Human flourishing was found in families, human wholeness in holiness. The Institute, through its publications, conferences, seminars, promotion of sound public policy and in co-operation with affiliated groups, offers a rediscovery of that distinct moral tradition. It proposes, with Wendell Berry, that our place of safety can only be the community, "and not just one community, but many of them everywhere, upon [which] depends all that we still claim to value: freedom, dignity, health, mutual help and affection."


The Institute is distinct from the many national Chesterton Societies that exist in America, England and around the globe. These societies exist to foster an interest in the man and his work. The Institute supports them in this task where it can, but its own purpose is one of understanding, of evangelising, of persuading, of converting culture. In that its work must always be broader even than Chesterton himself. Ultimately, to be Chestertonian is to be interested less in the man than in the truths he articulated, and the spirit he represents.

The Institute aims to recover and revive the fullness of what it means to be a Catholic intellectual in today's world, and it takes G.K. Chesterton as a representative of this fullness. The Christian humanism fostered by the Institute is expressed in speaking and writing, through conferences and a range of publications, including journals such as The Chesterton Review and Second Spring. Particular projects of the Institute are concerned with the Sane Economy, Christian Reunion and Jewish-Christian Dialogue, Education and Liberty, the New Age Movement, the Far East, Bioethics, family-friendly Tax Reform, and a study of national cultures in, for example, Ireland and Poland.

Posted by dmzach

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