Developing the Land: 1908–1912

Abstract

Both Chesterton’s artistic and critical writing takes on a new maturity and confidence in tone during the year 1907, and it cannot be forgotten that also during 1907 he was writing the statement of his acceptance of the Anglo-Catholic church: Orthodoxy. Not surprisingly the book was written in answer to a reviewer of Heretics, G. S. Street, who challenged Chesterton to state an alternative dogma. In Orthodoxy Chesterton not only provides the first consistent background to his religious and philosophical beliefs, but also states the primary aspects of his mature concept of art. Until writing Orthodoxy Chesterton has, in his critical work, concentrated on a negative view of religion and art: what they should not be, rather than what they should be. Just as The Man Who Was Thursday exuded a new-found confidence because of his discovery of a satisfactory form, in this book we find at the root of all the ideas a positive recognition of a specific external authority. To satisfy the principles of his belief, Chesterton found that the authority had to be the Christian God within formal religion.