The Ball and the Cross

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic. As an author he created the fictional priest-detective Father Brown, and produced several notable works on apologetics including Orthodoxy (1908) and The Everlasting Man (1925). He routinely referred to himself as an ‘orthodox’ Christian, and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting to Catholicism from High Church Anglicanism. He was born in Kensington, educated at St Paul’s School, and later attended the Slade School of Art, a department of University College London, to become an illustrator. He also took classes in literature at UCL but did not complete a degree in either subject. His first positions were within publishing houses, during which time he also became a freelance art and literary critic, and in 1902 the Daily News gave him a weekly opinion column, followed in 1905 by a weekly column in the London Illustrated News for which he continued to write for the next 30 years. In 1901 he married Frances Blogg who played a large role in his career as amanuensis and personal manager. Throughout the course of his career Chesterton wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4,000 essays, and several plays. His writings consistently displayed wit and a sense of humour, and he would often employ paradox while making serious comments on the world, politics, economics, philosophy, theology, and many other topics. His novel The Ball and the Cross was first published in book form in 1909, the first chapters having been serialised from 1905-06. The ball of the title refers to a rationalist worldview, with the cross representing Christianity, and the novel begins with a series of debates about rationalism and religion between a Professor Lucifer and a monk named Michael. Much of the rest of the book concerns the duelling, both figurative and somewhat more literal, between a Jacobite Catholic, Maclan, and an atheist socialist, Turnbull, both of whom are represented in a sympathetic light, and shown to be ready to fight and die for their opposing beliefs. The partnership between them gradually develops into a friendship, and the real antagonist turns out to be the outside world, desperate to prevent a duel over ‘mere religion’, a subject both parties judge to be of the utmost importance.