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CHESTERTON INSTITUTE LAUNCHES UK
APPEAL
On Wed. 12th October 2005, the G.K.
Chesterton Institute for Faith &
Culture, based at Seton Hall University,
New Jersey, and Oxford in England, held
a reception at the Athenaeum in London
to mark 30 years of cultural
evangelization through The Chesterton
Review and related activities around the
world, including conferences in England,
Ireland, Croatia, Lithuania, Argentina
and the USA.
To a distinguished audience of
political, media and religious figures,
Mrs Cherie Blair made an appeal for
support of the Institute, describing
Chesterton as a great English writer
currently experiencing a revival of
scholarly interest, and whose poetry she
had loved as a child. The work of the
Institute named after him, she said, is
simply “the creative continuation of the
tradition that Chesterton represents
(along with Lewis, Newman, Dawson and
T.S. Eliot) – the tradition of Christian
humanism, of common sense wisdom, and a
feeling for the sacred in ordinary life.
Chesterton knew that without the dignity
and sense of purpose that comes from our
relationship with a God who made us,
there can be no ultimate basis for human
equality, for democracy, for justice,
for human rights.” As defender of human
rights herself, she herself took
extremely seriously this idea that
rights are founded in our relationship
to the Creator.
“For the last three decades”, she went
on, “the Chesterton Review and Institute
have tried to promote a benign cultural
revolution, and a revival of interest in
intelligent Christianity – meaning a
Christianity that is traditional without
being fundamentalist, and radical
without being aggressive.”
She quipped, quoting Chesterton, that
“the whole world is dividing itself into
progressives and conservatives. The job
of the progressives is to go on making
mistakes. The job of the conservatives
is to prevent those mistakes from being
corrected.” Back in 1930 Chesterton
wrote that “people are inundated,
blinded, deafened, and mentally
paralysed by a flood of vulgar and
tasteless externals, leaving them no
time for leisure, thought, or creation
from within themselves”. We surely
recognize some truth in this
description, she said. Chesterton’s
insights speak eloquently to a Western
world exhausted by materialism.
Mrs Blair praised the Chesterton Library
and study centre that the Institute is
trying to establish in Oxford, and
appealed for continued support in making
that possible.
Mgr Keith Barltrop, the Director of the
Catholic Agency for the Support of
Evangelization, recently created by the
Bishops of England and Wales, also spoke
in praise of the Chesterton Institute’s
work. “In many ways,” he said, “the
Chesterton Institute is our only partner
in this vital work of evangelizing
culture.” The Bishop of Nottingham,
Malcolm McMahon OP, the Catholic Bishop
in charge of Evangelization, has agreed
to be an Episcopal Patron of the
Chesterton Institute’s appeal in the UK.
His Excellency Javier Martinez, the
Archbishop of Granada, will be giving a
keynote speech on Evangelization at a
study day organized by the Institute at
the Catholic Chaplaincy of Oxford
University on Saturday 5 November, at
which the other speakers will include
Mgr Barltrop, Fr Ian Ker and Tim Calvert
OP.
Stratford Caldecott, the UK director of
the Institute and Editor of its other
journal Second Spring, added that
Chesterton’s social philosophy of
“Distributism” has been in many ways the
ancestor of today’s radical movements in
defence of life, ecology, the family,
agriculture, small shops and small
communities. It opposed corruption in
business, the media and politics.
“There is plenty of room for
disagreement on exactly how the
principles of human dignity may be
translated into political action,” he
said, “but it is clear that all the
major political parties in this country
are now well aware of the need to think
deeply and debate these issues
effectively. It seems we are entering
into a period when the role of
independent Christian ‘think tanks’ like
the Chesterton Institute will be more
important than ever.”
Earlier in the week, the distinguished
historian Dr Sheridan Gilley had spoken
at an event in Arundel Castle, comparing
G.K. Chesterton with John Henry Newman
as an exponent and defender of
Christianity. Newman scholar Ian Ker and
the philosopher John Haldane have also
recently drawn attention to Chesterton’s
lasting importance as a thinker and
writer. It seems that Chesterton’s star
is on the rise again – both in academic
circles and among Christians (the latter
interest perhaps fuelled partly by the
realization that he was a major
influence on C.S. Lewis).
The Chesterton Review founded by Ian
Boyd CSB has stood for thirty years
against a consumerist cultural ethos has
a fatal power to undermine the “common
things” which Chestertonians love and
seek to protect. The Institute provides
resources for the study not only of
Chesterton and his immediate circle, but
of the wider tradition to which he
belongs. The message of this week,
however, was that it depends for its
existence upon the generosity of its
benefactors, and new UK benefactors are
urgently needed if the work in Oxford is
to continue.
Information: Chesterton Institute for
Faith & Culture, 6a King St, Oxford OX2
6DF
Tel. 01865 552 154
Email: s_caldecott@yahoo.co.uk
Web sites: http://academic.shu.edu/chesterton/index.htm
And www.secondspring.co.uk
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