January 9, 2015 

Meeting of the WPA Chesterton Society

Greetings Fellow WPA Chestertonians and Friends,


As I write this, we are squarely in the middle of the Octave of Christmas. I hope you are continuing to enjoy Feasting, Festing and Resting. New Years Day and Epiphany are not far off, and the conclusion of this Holiday Season will be quickly followed by the Friday, January 9th meeting of our WPA Chesterton Society.

Our Reading for January...

At our January meeting we will begin a discussion of The Blatchford Controversies. The Blatchford Controversies is an early series of essays written by G.K. Chesterton in response to a "rationalist credo" published in 1903 by Mr. Robert Blatchford, editor of the Clarion newspaper. These essays were eventually gathered into a volume and published as a book.  They represent a spirited public debate which formed the basis for Chesterton's book Heretics, which then led to his writing Orthodoxy. 

At our meeting we will read and discuss the Introduction written by Masie Ward, and the first two chapters titled "Christianity and Rationalism",  and "Why I Believe in Christianity".

Where to find it...

The book is relatively brief, and can be printed from a digital source in under 20 pages. 

I will send an email to all those on our group email list, with an attachment of a pdf. file of the book. If the email and attachment does not show up in your inbox, email me and I will make sure you get a copy.

The Blatchford Controversies is also readily available to print from the internet.  Links can be found here or here. The book can be purchased for a Kindle device here for $1.29.

  

You may be interested to know that Volume I of the Collected Works of G.K Chesterton, published by Ignatius Press includes the classics Heretics and Orthodoxy, along with Chesterton’s The Blatchford Controversies, and is available from the American Chesterton Society web store. Later this year we will be reading and discussing Heretics. 

Coming up next...

We will take the months of January and February to discuss The Blatchford Controversies, covering two chapters per meeting. Then in March we will begin a discussion of Chesterton's biography of William Cobbett. You are free to obtain William Cobbett on your own, but we will do a group purchase of the book from the American Chesterton Society webstore. With the group discount offered to local Chesterton Societies, the cost per book will be $10. If you would like to be included in the William Cobbett group buy, please let me know asap. 

As usual...

Our meetings are held in the Village of Middle Lancaster, at the Lancaster Township Community Center located on Kings Alley and Community Center Drive, in Butler County PA. Kings Ally is off of Rt. 19 approx. 4.5 miles north of Zelienople, and just north of the Zion Lutheran Church and just south of East Lancaster Road. (The Community Center is a former one room school house, adjacent to the ball fields at Bauder Park.) The doors open at 7:00pm for pot luck refreshments, with the discussion beginning at 7:30. The meeting wraps up sometime around 9:30pm.

Please consider bringing something for the refreshment table...

...and as always, feel free to email me at wpachesterton@gmail.com if you have any questions or comments.