In searching for Chesterton commenting on Advent, I came across this book. The site I found it on has a pdf file with the book's introduction. I clicked it and started to read it. As I read, I said to myself "at the end, I'm going to find Dale Ahlquist's name." But no, it's not by Dale, it's by Robert Moore-Jumonville, another Chestertonian who has spoken at the last three Chesterton Conferences.
If you're new to Chesterton, this is a great introduction. If you've read a little Chesterton, you'll probably just nod your head in agreement and smile.
Here's Robert's Introduction to the book.
If Gilbert Keith Chesterton came striding across the threshold of your fire-crackling Christmas party, you would most likely gape in wonder, then laugh, listen, and come to love him. He might remind you of Father Christmas grinning from ear to ear, except for the cigar clenched in his mouth.
At a towering six-foot-four and weighing three hundred pounds, Chesterton was energetic and alluring, a daunting giant,whom strangers soon realized possessed the heart of an elf. He played Christmas games with children, requesting colored tinsel to paste on his own cutout cardboard figures. His contagious laughter invited others to join him in his wit and repartee, his childlike innocence, and love of life. In him was a humor akin to humility: a humor that delighted in life but refused to take the enigma of being human too seriously, a joyous humor with a sane estimate of itself and others, a holy humor that lived lightly because it trusted God for maintaining the universe.
Born in London in 1874, and dying there in 1936, Chesterton seemed a comic figure to some, but his towering intellect matched his physical height. This was a man who could write a longhand essay while simultaneously dictating another to his secretary. Having studied art at the Slade School in London, Chesterton humbly claimed his main craft as journalism. But in addition to writing a weekly article for his entire adult life, Chesterton authored more than a hundred books and contributed essays to many more. Furthermore, he wrote capably and Christianly on almost every conceivable topic in almost every imaginable genre: literary criticism, poetry, novel, short story, biography, theology, apologetics, mystery—and the list goes on. Rather than journalist, he could be better dubbed a Christian cultural critic in the English “man of letters” tradition.
Chesterton delights many of his readers as a gracious person who fights for Christian truth, but never arrogantly, rather as a genius with an open mind, as a grateful person with deep devotion to God and commitment to stand alongside the common citizen. Perhaps you will come to find, as others before you, that Gilbert Keith Chesterton has walked into your life to make you laugh and think, to serve as your friend and mentor.
Robert Moore-Jumonville
Spring Arbor University
2007
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