Coverage of Beazley’s case has focused above all on the fact that he was “only 17 at the time of the slaying,” as the New York Times put it. Beazley’s lawyers have also alleged that the victim’s son exercised undue influence on the prosecutors’ decision to ask for the death penalty, that the jury was racially biased, and that the lawyer who argued Beazley’s original appeal was incompetent. And his two codefendants recanted part of their testimony, in which they said that before the crime Beazley had said he wanted “to see what it feels like to see somebody die.” Prosecutors used this testimony to support their argument for the death penalty.

Beazley had no prior criminal record; his small-time crack dealing had gone undetected before the murder. The son of the first black city council member in Grapeland, Texas, he was a star football player and president of the senior class at the local high school. Still, no one openly disputes that he committed the murder, shooting John Luttig twice in the head, though some of his anti-death penalty supporters (about whom more below) manage to hint that there is some uncertainty about who actually pulled the trigger.

Luttig, 63 when he was killed, is invariably described in newspaper stories as a “civic leader.” He had pulled his 1989 Mercedes into the driveway, having brought his wife home from a Bible study, when he was surprised by Beazley and his friends. “It was supposed be a carjacking,” Jim Yardley wrote in a August 10 story in the Times, “and whether Mr. Beazley fired out of rage or in a fit of panic, John Luttig was killed as his terrified wife crawled under the car to survive.”

There’s a bit of psychologizing and special pleading in that account. Rage or a “fit of panic” aren’t the only alternatives if one wants to speculate on what was going through Beazley’s mind as put a gun next to a stranger’s head and pulled the trigger. Maybe he did it because he could, because he was the one holding the gun and Luttig was helpless. Maybe he did it without thinking at all—the awful but logical conclusion of a series of small choices, one leading to the next.

And what is Beazley’s own version? Well, Yardley reports, “he does not say he is innocent, but he will not explain exactly what happened that night.” To his credit, Beazley doesn’t offer any excuses to Yardley, though his refusal to clarify what happened seems odd.

A visit to the Web makes an unclear picture even murkier. Type in “Napoleon Beazley” and you are immediately directed to an impressive site maintained by the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty. Here you will find a summary of Beazley’s case, including a line listing his occupation as “Artist, poet, philosopher; Brother, friend.” There are links to “Webpages of Napoleon’s International Supporters,” “Napoleon’s Italian Website,” “Project Napoleon,” and much more, including, of course, a great deal about international indignation over the barbarity of the United States.

One example of the latter is a statement from Amnesty International, prefaced by a quote from Beazley’s mother, Rena:

People change. You know, to take somebody’s life at 17—you can’t hold a 17-year-old by the same standards as you do me or you. … I’ve made some poor decisions, everybody does. But experience—you know, life—life is a teacher, and I know even today Napoleon is much better now than he was then

Also on the site are links to an interview with Beazley and a brief essay by him, entitled “Caged Animals.” The title of the interview suggests an unearned intimacy: “Interview with Napoleon.” We’re on a first-name basis, Napoleon and I—and the others who have adopted him as the latest death row cause. Of course Beazley isn’t responsible for the attitudes struck by his supporters, any more than he is responsible for the fawning tone of the interviewer, who says at one point “Young man, it’s a waste having you in here.”

But Beazley’s own words, in the interview and the essay, are troubling, too. You might think to find here some reflection on the “poor decision” he made when he killed John Luttig. No. Beazley tells the interviewer that when he got on death row, he said to himself: “Perhaps you could have prevented it. Perhaps you couldn’t, who can say? You are where you are and how you came here is of no consequence except in so far as you learn from it.” Who can say?

The interviewer says of Beazley: “We found him to be polite, intelligent, amiable, witty, and spirited.” Some of those qualities come through in the printed text, along with others not mentioned by the interviewer: anger, intense anger; moral and intellectual confusion; genuine spiritual yearning and rank self-justification.

Perhaps the most telling remark in the entire interview is this: “In essence, no one has the proper inclination or justification for punishing someone else.” It’s not just the death penalty but incarceration, indeed punishment itself that’s fundamentally unjust. The prisoners are victims, like the zoo animals Beazley movingly describes in his essay.

Very likely we’ll never know “exactly what happened” on the night that John Luttig was murdered. But one detail from that August 10 Times story haunts me. While Beazley refuses to offer justifications for what he did, Yardley reports, “He said that as a light-skinned black teenager with lots of white friends he felt that stepping into the drug world helped him fit in with some black teenagers in town.”

“When I started selling crack,” Beazley says, “it was like ‘I’m cool, I can fit in.’ I didn’t want to be shunned by the black community, I guess you could say. That’s a sad thing to say.”

In all the talk about the death penalty and the racially biased jury and the awfulness of Texas, that “sad thing” hasn’t been much noticed. It doesn’t make good copy for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and Bob Herbert and their ilk. Where are the leaders in “the black community” who will tell it like it is?

John Wilson is editor of Books & Culture and editor-at-large for Christianity Today.

Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere

Yahoo’s full coverage area on Texas executions offers links to many resources and news stories about the Beazley case, including:

Beazley case included unusual twists — Associated Press (Aug 16, 2001)

Attorney for Beazley vows to pursue commutation request — CNN (Aug 16, 2001)

Texas inmate gets 11th-hour reprieve — USA Today (Aug 16, 2001)

Stay for Beazley reignites debate over U.S. capital punishment — AFP (Aug 16, 2001)

Court stays execution of young Texan — Los Angeles Times (Aug 16, 2001)

Tex. court grants stay of execution to juvenile killer — The Washington Post (Aug 16, 2001)

Texas execution is halted by state Court of Appeals — The New York Times (Aug 16, 2001)

Texas teenage killer wins reprieve — BBC (Aug 16, 2001)

Teen killer wins rare stay of execution in Texas — Reuters (Aug 15, 2001)

Texas appeals court stays execution — The New York Times (Aug 15, 2001)

Texas execution stayed in world-renowned case — CNN (Aug 15, 2001)

Beazley lawyer admits botching initial appeal — Houston Chronicle (Aug 15, 2001)

More news stories and opinion pieces on the Beazley case are available here.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has a page listing Beazley’s crimes, and lists Beazley’s race as white.

Books & Culture Corner appears Mondays at ChristianityToday.com. Earlier Books & Culture Corners include:

Apocalyptic City | The dream and the nightmare of megalopolis (Aug. 20, 2001)

Megalopolis Forty Years On | The ambiguous face of the city. (Aug. 13, 2001)

The Future Is Now | You want the news? Read science fiction. (Aug. 6, 2001)

Memorable Memoirs | Whether telling us about the Spirit in the South or the crumbling atheism of a Chinese immigrant, these books provide windos into others’ lives. (July 30, 2001)

The Distorted Story of Memoir Inc. | There are many good autobiographies out there, but do those who write about them have to pretend they’re the only books worth reading? (July 23, 2001)

Looking for the Soul of CBA | Nearly anything that can be said about Christian publishing is true to some extent, thanks to the industry’s ever-enlarging territory. (July 16, 2001)

Give Me Your Muslims, Your Hindus, Your Eastern Orthodox, Yearning to Breathe Free | Immigration’s long-ignored effect on American religion is garnering much attention from scholars (July 9, 2001)

Shrekked | Why are readers responding passionately about a simple film review? (July 2, 2001)

Debutante Fiction | The New Yorker should have paid less attention to the novelty of its writers and more attention to their writing. (June 18, 2001)

Saint Teddy? | Yes, Roosevelt paid the usual presidential respects to Christianity, but didn’t show much explicit personal devotion to it. (June 11, 2001)

History Bully | Christian scholars speak not-so-softly over a big sticking point: Theodore Roosevelt’s faith. (June 4, 2001)

‘Taken Up in Glory’ | The Ascension has been forgotten in many Protestant churches, jettisoning an essential part of the Christian story. (May 21, 2001)

Who Won? Who Cares? | Skip the latest ballot reviews and read Italo Calvino’s brilliant election novella “The Watcher.” (May 14, 2001)

Hot from the Oven

There is a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. The good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.
—Capt. Willard (Martin Sheen) Apocalypse Now Redux

The most critically acclaimed movie of the year was made 22 years ago. Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) stands on many critics’ lists of all-time favorites. Some call it the most important war film ever made. Basically an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, which sets the story in the Congo rather than Vietnam, Apocalypse Now is about Americans lost in a war they do not understand. Conrad’s novel gave Coppola the perfect vehicle for a cinematic odyssey into the heart of the Vietnam conflict.

Martin Sheen stars as Captain Willard, an American soldier sent upriver through Vietnam into Cambodia to find and assassinate another American, Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Kurtz has gone insane, Willard’s superiors tell him; he has disappeared into the wilderness to start some kind of cult. At first, Willard cannot comprehend how this “perfect soldier” could use such “unsound methods.” But the farther he travels into the hellish battlegrounds of the jungle, the more he realizes the madness, audacity, and, yes, “unsound methods” of America’s participation in the struggle. As young and bewildered soldiers die meaningless deaths around him, he feels his own soul, and sanity, suffocating. In the end, Willard has some inkling that he perhaps he is as lost as the man he has been sent to kill.

In the new Apocalypse Now Redux, Coppola integrates 49 minutes of additional footage. After suffering a long and forgettable year at the movies, most critics are rejoicing, hoping future filmmakers will learn some lessons about great moviemaking.

The Phantom Tollbooth‘s J. Robert Parks of calls Apocalypse Now “absolutely required viewing, especially if you’ve never seen it on the big screen before. It is a masterpiece in every sense of the word and a thought-provoking and deeply unsettling portrait of what lies at the heart of all of us.” He praises the performances: “Martin Sheen perfectly captures a man coming to grips with himself but losing his grip on reality. His slow descent into darkness is compelling. The famously incorrigible Brando gives a haunting performance as Kurtz. And as Anthony Lane wrote in last week’s New Yorker, has there ever been a better cameo than Robert Duvall’s?” Parks has minor reservations about the new scenes: “Each of these additions provides a greater context for the film … [but] they also have the result of dragging out what is already a long movie.” The Christian Science Monitor‘s David Sterritt writes, “The expanded Redux is even more resonant—partly because of its added material, and partly because the passage of time has increased the film’s value as a key cultural document of the Vietnam War era and its aftermath. It’s a movie not to be missed.”

Apocalypse Now—and its Redux as well—remains one of the most rewarding moviegoing experiences of my life. I agree with Parks; the new material isn’t entirely necessary, and some may find it excessive. But this version’s virtues far outweigh its flaws. See it on a big screen; to see it on video is to settle for a concert on the radio rather than going to hear a symphony. (CAUTION: The onscreen violence and nudity make it inappropriate for younger viewers and grownups for whom such images might be stumbling blocks. But if you remain focused on what is happening, and the attitudes of these brutish soldiers, you will see clearly that this behavior is not condoned by the storyteller.) Coppola’s greatness is that he binds all of these searing images and sounds into a meaningful purpose. When humankind decides there is no god beyond itself, it slowly spirals downward into self-destruction—no film portrays this truth better. There are painful moments when these broken men seem ready to cry out for God, but instead they reach for the wrong things. When prostitutes arrive and “comfort” the men, new scenes show the men ignoring the needs and the sadness of these ladies; in the end, the women are trampled and abused just like Vietnam itself at the hands of ugly Americans. When the men look for dignity in their duty, violence begets violence, spiraling out of control into chaos. Every man that Willard encounters along his dark path is at another stage of madness born of despair. The film was obviously not intended to act as a testament to the power of Jesus Christ, nor is it trying to be uplifting. Instead it inadvertently echoes Ecclesiastes—human effort is futile without the humbling, guiding influence of God’s grace and love. It is a giant DO NOT ENTER sign posted at the edge of the human heart’s sinful abyss.

Some Christian critics don’t see the film as valuable. One Christian review Web site—Movieguide—dismisses Apocalypse Now as “abhorrent,” calling it a “strange, confused, pagan take on Vietnam.” Coppola, the review says, has “weird sensibilities,” and screenwriter John Milius is also accused of having a “pagan philosophy.” Preview‘s John Barber protests, “There is an underlying anti-war sentiment in the film, yet the stunning cinematography makes war aesthetically pleasing. Moviegoers who prefer morally sound, uplifting entertainment should look elsewhere.” Indeed, if you’re looking for “uplifting entertainment,” go elsewhere: Apocalypse Now is a work of art. The stunning cinematography does not make war look appealing, unless you have an appetite for chaos and gore. Certainly there is something aesthetically pleasing about a fleet of helicopters, pillars of fire, the impenetrable jungle. The beauty of these things only makes the wickedness of mankind’s evil in the midst of it all the more disturbing.

Across the country, the mainstream press is celebrating. Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert wrote a detailed and personal rave: “More than ever it is clear … Apocalypse Now is one of the great films of all time. It shames modern Hollywood’s timidity. To watch it is to feel yourself lifted up to the heights where the cinema can take you, but so rarely does. The film is a mirror reflecting our feelings about the war in Vietnam, in all their complexity and sadness. To those who wrote me defending the banality of Pearl Harbor, I wrote back: ‘See Apocalypse Now and reflect on the difference.'” He calls the movie “epic filmmaking on a scale within the reach of only a few directors—Tarkovsky, Lean, Eisenstein, Kurosawa.”

Many argued about the value of the added footage. Mr. Showbiz‘s Michael Atkinson writes, “[The new material] deepens it, feverishly ups the psychedelic war-opera quotient.” He explains that it “offers a rather concise statement about the war: It didn’t happen to us, we did it to ourselves. The United States would have itself believe it all started with the Vietcong, and we intervened to save the poor South Vietnamese, but Coppola had the [courage], in 1979, to give us a clearer picture. It’s a shame that the film’s more salient political tangents were cut until now.” Entertainment Weekly‘s Owen Gleiberman sounds one of the few sour notes: “I don’t think Redux is superior to the 1979 version. Quite the contrary, it’s draggier and more portentous, more inflated with its own importance.”

David Halberstam, Vietnam reporter and author of The Best and the Brightest, was interviewed about the film at Salon.com. When asked why Vietnam casts such a long, dark shadow over America still, he replies, “It was the second Civil War, us against us, and the Vietnamese were bystanders. I think that if you had that belated epiphany, and then you see Apocalypse Now, I think that theme runs through it, the idea that it’s us against us and this is what we’ve done to ourselves and to these other people.”

Whichever version moviegoers prefer in the long run, Apocalypse Now will last as a sermon, a story of the brimstone that burns up those who set themselves up as God. I can think of no more fitting portrayal of hell in the history of movies than the moment when Colonel Kurtz comes a culminating moment of self-realization and gasps, “The horror, the horror.” Apocalypse Now is great art, powerfully exposing (rather than condoning or merely sensationalizing) evil. Once the disease is exposed, perhaps we can live in better health. Perhaps faced with darkness like this, people will be more likely to turn toward light. It may be a redemptive experience after all.

* * *

In Apocalypse Now, one of Kurtz’s half-crazed admirers looks about at the bloodied victims of the Colonel’s brutality and says, “Sometimes he goes to far … but he’d be the first to admit it.” In this summer’s most foul-mouthed comedy, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, director Kevin Smith goes too far—and he is, indeed, the first to admit it. In fact, the movie’s official Web site attacks the film and mocks its box office numbers. But the question is Does an awareness of your mediocrity and indulgence thus make it permissible?

Jay and Silent Bob is the last installment in what Smith calls his “New Jersey” series. It features many of the same characters from his previous comedies—Mallrats, Clerks, Chasing Amy, and Dogma. These pot-smoking, lustful, potty-mouthed characters are based on the kids Smith grew up with. In spite of their weaknesses—which he clearly portrays as weaknesses—he still cares enough about them to portray them as heroes. This, of course, doesn’t mean moviegoers will find these punks to be pleasant company. If you haven’t seen Smith’s previous films, you probably won’t understand a lot of the gags in this film, and even if you have, you may not be prepared for the tidal wave of profanity-laced dialogue and foul sexual humor in this movie.

Movieguide turns in a review of outrage and contempt: “One thing’s for sure … many parents, teachers, pastors, and taxpayers will have to deal with the horrible effects that this and other ill-conceived pagan garbage will have on the world’s children and their descendents.” The U.S. Catholic Conference calls it “just one nasty joke after another tacked onto a very slim premise.” Movie Parables‘ Michael Elliott agrees that the humor is “regressive, juvenile, unashamedly crude, and totally pervasive.” But he finds something of value in the midst of it: “The old saying ‘Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt’ becomes clearly understood when watching the characters of Jay and Silent Bob do their thing. Jay leaves no doubt as to his foolishness. Silent Bob, who chooses to hold his tongue throughout most of the film, comes across as infinitely more intelligent than Jay, although this cannot really be considered as a particularly difficult feat.”

Some mainstream critics defend the film, saying the movie loudly ridicules its own gratuitous behavior. Roger Ebert notes Kevin Smith’s admittance that he “made jokes at the expense of two characters who neither [Smith] nor the audience have ever held up to be paragons of intellect. They’re idiots.” Premiere‘s Glenn Kenny laughed until he hurt. “Smith assures us: He’s conceived Jay and Silent Bob as a kind of purgative, a way to get these guys out of his system. A kind of stoner version of a Hope-Crosby road picture, [the movie] throws just about everything ‘mature’ filmmakers aspire to—narrative coherence, character empathy, that sort of thing—out the window in favor of jokes, jokes, jokes. Bodily function jokes, gay jokes, inside jokes—all as over the top as you can imagine.” Mike Clark of USA Today writes, “Most uneven movies vary from scene to scene; in Smith’s, great and dreadful dialogue appear in the same exchanges.”

MaryAnn Johanson, The Flick Filosopher, sees some method in the madness. She calls the movie “self-indulgent,” but adds, “Smith’s alter egos here … do not pretend to be anything other than what they are: losers. There’s a good dollop of soul-searching self-awareness at work. It’s a romp through Smith’s psyche. Any objection anyone could possibly raise about the film Smith has dealt with within the film itself, taking pointed barbs at himself, his friends, his characters, his studio, his films, and his fans. The only thing that’s worth taking seriously here is Smith’s good-natured exuberance. His Jay and Bob are idiots, true, but sweet ones, underneath their stoner exteriors.”

Smith is certainly exuberant, and he does indeed make fun of his own frivolous comedy right in the midst of it. But I cannot recommend the movie. It’s too bad, because there are some hilarious scenes: I especially howled at the spoof of Good Will Hunting enacted by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, and there’s a funny little tribute to Planet of the Apes as well. But the central character’s profane speech and hormone-propelled sexual perversity are too relentless, interrupting, stalling, even distracting us from the storytelling—it goes from character development to merely gratuitous jabber. (I’ve posted some questions for Kevin Smith on my own site, Looking Closer.) Even if Smith plans for this to be his last trashy comedy (he says so), that does not excuse this “last blast” of unnecessary debauchery. It’s as irresponsible and immature as having a pornographic bachelor party the night before one’s wedding.

* * *

Speaking of people who sometimes go too far … Woody Allen is back, with a new comedy in the guise of a ’30s or ’40s detective comedy—The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Audience response to this one is mixed, even among Allen enthusiasts. Allen plays an insurance investigator named C.W. Briggs who can’t get along with an efficiency expert named Betty Ann (Helen Hunt). When a hypnotist charms Briggs into performing a jewel heist for him, the hypnosis has transforming effects on his relationship with Betty Ann as well.

Movieguide‘s critic finds Scorpion to be “one of Allen’s funnier, more clever diversions, although it doesn’t have quite the artistry of Bullets Over Broadway, which has a similar setting. The new movie does, however, have a bit of a modern sexual sensibility, despite its old-fashioned qualities. Even so, Allen handles this in a muted way, using it as sort of a nostalgic homage to old detective movies starring Humphrey Bogart.” Focus on the Family‘s Bob Smithouser, on the other hand, feels stung: “This film has visual flair and a few funny bits. Unfortunately, the bickering between Allen and Hunt gets tiresome and, as is the case with so many Woody Allen movies … Jade Scorpion stumbles because too much of its witty repartee aims below the belt.” The U.S. Catholic Conference posts, “Allen’s often funny film capitalizes on the era’s fascination with hypnotism, though it runs into trouble wrapping up its otherwise entertaining narrative.”

Mainstream critics were similarly split. MaryAnn Johanson is repulsed by Allen’s persistent performances as old men by women young enough to be his granddaughters. “Allen seems fed up with adulthood and appears to want to revert to adolescence,” she writes. “Male screenwriters do this all the time, of course … create film heroes who are their alter egos, who get the girl and solve the case and walk off into the sunset to live happily ever after. Jade Scorpion seems to be little more than him trying to work out whether all those women would still find him attractive without fame, money, talent, or indeed any discernible appealing factor whatsoever. And he concludes that, Yeah, he’s a stud no matter how you cut it.”

* * *

Bubble Boy is getting universally bad reviews and denunciations. The movie presents itself as a satire about how religion builds walls between its adherents and reality. The story follows a sick boy encased in a plastic bubble by his Christian fundamentalist mother. He escapes his mother’s tyranny in order to find his true love, and falls into many misadventures along the way.

Movieguide actually calls the film “demonic” as well as “anti-Christian, politically-correct” and “hedonistic.” “Like South Park,” the critic writes, “this movie is purposefully offensive, but it is not an equal opportunity offender. Even with some anti-Semitism and anti-Hinduism, it is clear that the target is Christianity. The acting, dialogue and story points are stupid, but, because of the mocking satire in the movie, this could be intentional. This movie is a heavy-handed, sophomoric attempt to spread cancer throughout the fabric of our culture, to make the good seem bad and the bad seem good, to laugh at all things righteous and to extol all things perverse.”

“All things perverse?” responds an incredulous Peter T. Chattaway (B.C. Christian News, Books and Culture, Christianity Today) at the onFilm eGroups discussion list. He also asks, “Just how ‘politically correct’ can a movie be if it’s causing this sort of outrage? Where I come from, ‘politically correct’ means you go out of your way to avoid offending people.” He adds, “I wholeheartedly disagree with the claim that comedies about disease are inherently wrong. If you can make Oscar-winning comedies about the Holocaust [Life is Beautiful], then you can make comedies about pretty much anything … it’s just a matter of how.” (Chattaway, who hasn’t yet reviewed the film, is not saying he recommends it—just that the Movieguide review may go a bit too far.)

At Christian Spotlight on the Movies, Douglas Downs attempts a different approach: “Can I say anything positive about this movie? Jake Gyllenhall (October Sky) is very convincing as the naïve boy trapped in a bubble. He does make the most of what he has been given to work with. My grade for his skill in this very unfortunate role is an A+. The character of Chloe does give a strong message of abstinence. This may seem like a contradiction to the gross moral condition of this film. These two positive notes are eclipsed by one of the worst movies I have seen this year.”

Focus on the Family‘s Lindy Beam doesn’t see the film as specifically targeting Christian spirituality: “Everyone’s beliefs are as ‘comically’ stereotypical as possible. Depictions of religions other than Christianity can’t possibly be seen as proselytizing, since they’re all done in a mocking tone. And at the end, almost everyone abandons his own traditions, making the point … that none of this religious mumbo-jumbo (including Christianity) really matters anyhow.” She quotes a fellow believer: “‘If you start messing with Jesus, I’m going to be on your case. But if you satirize Christians, I’m probably going to agree with you.’ I thought this an astute observation, because satire often contains elements of truth. Christians ought to strive to be winsome. When the world pegs us as legalistic, superstitious and fearful, we should be honest enough to evaluate our lives and weed out any lurking legalism, superstition and fear.”

Indeed, artists sometimes misrepresent Christianity, and when they do we should indeed respond appropriately. But when the things that they lampoon are indeed weaknesses, such as legalism, hypocrisy, judgmentalism, or self-righteousness, we had better take note. Popular entertainment is a sorely distorted mirror of the truth, but it is still a mirror. We should pay close attention to see what—or who—we are reflecting.

Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere

American Pie 2, Rush Hour 2, The Others, Rat Race, The Princess Diaries, Captain Corelli’s Manolin, and Planet of the Apes.

(This article originally appeared in the May 24, 1974, issue of Christianity Today.)

Somehow it would seem an affront to Gilbert Keith Chesterton, born one hundred years ago this month, to attempt anything but a cheerful salute to his memory.

Son of a Kensington estate agent, Gilbert contrived for himself a deprived background: “I regret that I have no gloomy and savage father to offer to the public gaze as the true cause of all my tragic heritage … and that I cannot do my duty as a true modern, by cursing everybody who made me whatever I am.”

On the second page of his Autobiography he tells of the maternal influence upon him. His father mentioned that he had been asked to go on The Vestry (parish council). “At this my mother uttered something like a cry of pain; she said, ‘Oh, Edward, don’t! … We never have been respectable yet; don’t let’s begin now.'”

In 1887 Gilbert went to St. Paul’s School, where, apart from a certain talent in handling the English language, he did not distinguish himself. He left in 1892 and for three years studied art at the famous Slade School and English literature at London University. The writer in him won (he remained a competent artist), and a toehold was established in the world of words—reviewing, publisher’s dogsbody, freelance reporting. In 1900 he was on his way with publication of The Wild Knight and Other Poems. In 1901, to family misgiving, he married on a small income and boundless optimism.

Chesterton early discovered the value of paradox as “truth standing on its head to gain attention,” and exploited it to such good purpose that Fleet Street and Edwardian England took notice of the young man who had strong views on literary and social criticism and a whimsical way with words. He called himself a Socialist because the only alternative was not being a Socialist, but in fact he was stubbornly unclassifiable as much in politics as in other areas.

Chesterton disliked injustice and shiftiness, his onslaught on them being the more telling because he came at them from unlikely angles. Always, however, his animus was directed against policies and ideas, not against people. He produced works on Browning, Dickens, Shaw, Blake, Cobbett, and Stevenson, and formed lasting friendships with literary giants such as Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Hilaire Belloc. With the latter he championed “Distributism,” a system that combined magnificent principle and total impracticability.

A reputation for mild eccentricity is a tremendous asset, and Chesterton made the most of it. His sartorial quirks were pressed into the same service. If he made fun of others he laughed most of all at himself. This rare virtue may have saved him from summary lynching when he said about the emancipation of women, “Twenty million women rise to their feet with the cry, We will not be dictated to-and proceeded to become stenographers.”

Endowed naturally with absentmindedness, he capitalized on that, too, and on the helplessness not uncommon in the truly gifted. He could not fix his necktie; his wife told friends that he did not even know how to take it out of the drawer. He never came to terms with the telephone. He detested vegetarianism and teetotalism (though spirits were almost as evil as wine and beer were good). He habitually got lost or mislaid; hence the immortal telegram to his wife: “Am at Market Harborough. Where ought I to be.” Came the answer, “Home,” Frances having reasoned that once she got him back it would be easier to point him in the right direction.

It is staggering to find that this disorganized man produced more than one hundred books on a vast range of subjects and with evocative titles such as The Man Who Was Thursday, The Barbarism of Berlin, and Sidelights on New London and Newer York. He gave us Father Brown, the mild-mannered priest-detective who knew much more about human depravity than the two callow Cambridge students who pitied his simplicity (or rather that of the Yorkshire priest on whom the character was based), and whose investigations were interspersed with comments like, “One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place,” and “One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.”

Chesterton’s immoderation was known to all men. He worked, ate, and drank too much. He grew fatter and fatter. His nostalgic hankering after the robust Catholicism of the Middle Ages included the feasts and the hogsheads of wine but stopped at the fasting. Notre Dame’s famous chauffeur, Johnnie Mangan, tells of his visit for lectures and an LL.D.:

He was close to 400 lbs. but he’d never give it away … I brought him under the main building, he got stuck in the door of the car. Father O’Donnell tried to help. Mr. Chesterton said it reminded him of an old Irishwoman: “Why don’t you get out sideways?” “I have no sideways.”

Not surprisingly, Americans loved him. Journalists were delighted by his bons mots. Thus his remark on Broadway’s dazzling lights: “What a glorious garden of wonders this would be to anyone lucky enough not to be able to read.” In a remark quoted in the New York Times in 1931 he observed: “There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.” To an American interviewer on another occasion he said: “Slang is too sacred and precious to be used promiscuously. It should be led up to reverently for it expresses what the King’s English could not.”

Like his friend Ronald Knox he was both entertainer and Christian apologist. The world never fails to appreciate the combination when it is well done; even evangelicals sometimes give the impression of bestowing a waiver on deviations if a man is enough of a genius. For one who could be careless about wider implications in other fields, Chesterton held to a notably reasoned Christianity, perhaps because he never considered the answers until he formulated the questions.

And he made others think, through pronouncements zany enough to pass their defenses and explode devastatingly within their minds. He was a master of the metaphorical Mickey Finn which (because paradox is involved?) has the opposite effect, galvanizing people into action or into self-examination, making them vulnerable.

He locked horns with the modernistic teaching of R. J. Campbell and the so-called New Theology, which even seventy years ago was identified as old heresy. Early Christians not only saw our modern problems, but saw through them. Claiming to be a development, modernism was actually an abandonment of the Christian idea.

Chesterton marveled that religious liberty now meant that hardly anyone was allowed to mention the subject. He complained that “the act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.” Orthodoxy (the title he gave his most telling book) was widely regarded as the one unpardonable heresy. “Critics were almost entirely complimentary to what they were pleased to call my brilliant paradoxes; until they discovered that I really meant what I said.”

Though orthodoxy had received a bad press, he held that nothing in reality was so dangerous or so exciting. Along the historic path of Christendom there have been open traps of error and exaggeration, to fall into which would have been simple. “There are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.” To lapse into “any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure.” The ages have seen “dull heresies sprawling and prostrate wild truth reeling but erect.”

That work was published some thirteen years before he created a sensation in 1922 by becoming a Roman Catholic—the only church, he concluded, that “dared to go down with me into the depths of myself.” For long he had held back, partly in the hope that his wife would join him (she eventually did), partly because he was “much too frightened of that tremendous Reality on the altar.” That latter view is an improbable echo of something held by Kierkegaard, a Christian of very different temperament, who said there were “no longer the men living who could bear the pressure and weight of having a personal God.”

It is odd to imagine Chesterton, in many ways antinomian and individualistic, “submitting” to Rome. True, he had always had a high respect for tradition, “the democracy of the dead [that] refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” Whatever the inner conflict and the resultant changes, it made him no less irrepressible. He still evinced an old characteristic and justified it: “What can one be but frivolous about serious things?” he would ask. “Without frivolity they are simply too tremendous.”

His prophetic voice was never more clearly seen than during his last years when the British Broadcasting Corporation discovered his aptitude on that medium. In one memorable talk he uttered a warning:

Unless we can bring men back to enjoying the daily life which moderns call a dull life, our whole civilisation will be in ruins in about fifteen years. … Unless we can make daybreak and daily bread and the creative secrets of labour interesting in themselves, there will fall on all our civilisation a fatigue which is the one disease from which civilisations do not recover.

Chesterton was continually thankful for the “birthday present of birth,” and eagerly embraced the news that ditchwater, far from being dull, “teems with quiet fun.” Perhaps he would wish most of all to be remembered for commending to the human race a sense of gratitude. In that at least there was neither profundity nor paradox, but simply:

Give me a little time,
I shall not be able to appreciate them all;
if you open so many doors
And give me so many presents, O Lord God.

This article originally appeared in the May 24, 1974, issue of Christianity Today. At the time, J.D. Douglas was an Editor-at-Large for the magazine.

Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere

The American Chesterton Society gives a good introduction to Chesterton and a “basic course” on his works.

Chesterton’s writings, including his religious essays, fiction, and poems, are available all over the web.

The Chesterton Photograph and Portrait Page includes good images and descriptions of Chesterton’s appearance.

Gilbert! is a magazine devoted to the ideas and orthodoxy of Chesterton. Read sample articles or read its mission statement. (The magazine’s site also has an extensive page of links to writings by and about Chsterston)

Last year, Christianity Today’s sister publication Books & Culturerevisited Chesterton’s masterpiece, The Man Who Was Thursday.

Christianity Today looked at Christianity’s master of irony last September with a series of quotes showing Chesterton’s Paradoxical Orthodoxy.