Description:

Now with a foreword by Matthew Lee Anderson

Antiquated.
Unimaginative. Repressive. We've all heard these common reactions to orthodox Christian
beliefs. Even Christians themselves are guilty of the tendency to discard historic
Christianity.

Yet as we read through the literature in Christianity's past,
we learn that we are in better company with our beliefs than we might think. Through
his enchanting book, Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton reminds us of the paradoxes
of our faith and the joy that comes when we explore them.

From the
foreword by Matthew Lee Anderson, author of The End of Our Exploring:

"How
can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it?"

And
with that question, G.K. Chesterton recounts the heart of an intellectual journey
that took him from the edges of a nihilistic pessimism into the center of the paradoxical
joy of Christian orthodoxy. His book is not a defense of the Christian faith, at
least not primarily, so much as an attempt to explain how the startling paradoxes
and sharp edges of the creed explain everything else.

It is a dated work,
dealing in the categories and concerns of Chesterton's contemporaries, and yet it
comes nearer timelessness than anything we have today. Though Orthodoxy was
written near the start of the 20th century, I have dubbed it the most important
book for the 21st. There are few claims I have made in my life that I am more sure
of than that one. 

Amazon.com Review

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

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
***

From the Hardcover edition. --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
***

From the Hardcover edition.