Orthodoxy (For Teens)

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, journalist and debater, born in London in 1874. He wrote poems, novels, essays and the Father Brown detective stories, and loved arguing, cheerfully, with famous sceptics of his day. He wrote Orthodoxy in 1908. He later became a Roman Catholic, and died in 1936. His books helped C. S. Lewis come to faith.

It means “right belief”. Chesterton uses it for the central Christian faith summed up in the Apostles’ Creed: what Christians everywhere have believed about God, Jesus and the world. He is not talking about one particular church.

The original is full of jokes, long sentences and references to people from his time, so it can be tricky. This retelling keeps his best pictures and lines, explains the hard bits, and leaves out arguments with writers nobody reads any more.

No. He uses the old words of his time to make a point about a kind of thinking that is trapped in a small circle of logic. Mental illness is real and nobody’s fault. If your thoughts often spiral or feel out of control, please talk to a trusted adult or a doctor.

No. As a young art student he went through a dark time and drifted from faith. He held on, he said, by a thin thread of thanks for being alive at all. Orthodoxy tells how his thinking gradually led him back to Christianity.

No. It is a retelling for teenagers in plain modern words, drawn from across Orthodoxy and keeping Chesterton’s own sentences where they say it best. The full Orthodoxy is also available.