This week in Christian history: GK Chesterton converts to Catholicism, Robert Morrison dies, AME Zion Church gets first bishop

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Sunday, July 30, 2023

G.K. Chesterton Converts to Catholicism – July 30, 1922

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936), notable prolific writer and lay theologian. | Wikimedia Commons

This week marks the anniversary of when prolific essayist, author, poet and Christian apologist Gilbert Keith Chesterton became a member of the Roman Catholic Church.

Chesterton, who had been baptized in the Anglican Church as a baby and for a time considered himself an atheist, had gradually come to embrace Catholicism over a long period of time.

His friend, Father John O’Connor, who reportedly was the inspiration for Chesterton’s mystery story character Father Brown, oversaw the ceremony, which was held at a hotel ballroom.

“If people knew nothing else about G. K. Chesterton, they probably knew that he was immense, notoriously absent-minded, and a defender of Roman Catholicism,” noted the Christian History Institute.

“Asked why he joined the Catholic Church, Chesterton replied, ‘To get rid of my sins.’ He went on to add that sin confessed and adequately repented is abolished, and the sinner begins again as if he had never sinned.”