Why We Still Need Chesterton

Complete article here.

Paradoxically, Christopher Hitchens must be due for canonisation as a secular saint. In the broadcast snatches of his Toronto debate against Tony Blair on whether religion is a force for good, Hitchens assumed a kind of divine grandeur.

I am no theological expert but this seems to overlook the religious virtue of humility. When G K Chesterton was asked by The Times to write on the theme, “What's wrong with the world?” he submitted the following: “Dear Sirs, I am. Sincerely yours, G K Chesterton.”

Why didn't Blair produce Handel's Messiah as his witness? Perhaps followed by the Liberian war- lord, General Butt Naked, interviewed at the weekend, who apparently turned from inhuman slaughterer to meek and repentant sinner after a blinding vision of Christ.

G K Chesterton advised the use of “fairytale” language properly to evoke the nature of the world. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched. Hitchens and his fellow atheists talk of the superiority of reason over faith.

Chesterton countered that “reason itself is an act of faith”. Demonstrating this should be Blair's Bewitched project.