Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #222863 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 155 pages

From Amazon.com
If G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith is, as he called it, a "slovenly autobiography," then we need more slobs in the world. This quirky, slender book describes how Chesterton came to view orthodox Catholic Christianity as the way to satisfy his personal emotional needs, in a way that would also allow him to live happily in society. Chesterton argues that people in western society need a life of "practical romance, the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome." Drawing on such figures as Fra Angelico, George Bernard Shaw, and St. Paul to make his points, Chesterton argues that submission to ecclesiastical authority is the way to achieve a good and balanced life. The whole book is written in a style that is as majestic and down-to-earth as C.S. Lewis at his best. The final chapter, called "Authority and the Adventurer," is especially persuasive. It's hard to imagine a reader who will not close the book believing, at least for the moment, that the Church will make you free. --Michael Joseph Gross

From AudioFile
G.K. Chesterton put his philosophy of Christianity to paper in 1908, responding to the popularity of humanism with "a set of mental pictures" that stated his argument. Read by Simon Vance, those mental pictures come alive in a way that echoes Chesterton's original intent: to be at times poetic while maintaining the rhetorical style of an expert debater. While listening, the thought of Chesterton reading his work on a podium is likely to come to mind. Chesterton devoted too much of "Orthodoxy" to specific answers to religion's critics from his era. While you might remember H.G. Wells or George Bernard Shaw, references to their views on faith make these passages sound dated and dilute their overall effectiveness. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Review
"Whenever I feel my faith going dry again, I wander to a shelf and pick up a book by G.K. Chesterton."
--from the foreword by Philip Yancey, author of What's So Amazing About Grace? and The Jesus I Never Knew

"My favorite on the list [of top 100 spiritual classics of the twentieth century] is Chesterton's Orthodoxy. It offers wonderful arguments for embracing religious traditions, but it also has humor you don't typically find in religious writing."
--Philip Zaleski, author and journalist

Named by Publisher's Weekly as one of 10 "indispensable spiritual classics" of the past 1500 years.
--Publisher?s Weekly

"Chesterton's most enduring book.... Charming."
--World