Below Dena Hunt waxes joyful on the Chesterton Conference as an Outsider.  Allow me to do the same as an Insider.

I have, in the past, written euphorically on the annual Chesterton Conference, and it’s great to see others catching on and writing in the same tone.  Now that the conference is moving from town to town, and vast numbers are being exposed to it who did not normally consider travelling to Minnesota, where it used to be regularly held, this joy is spreading.  How do you explain this?

It really all comes down to salvation.

We like to think in America that we’re saved merely as individuals.  We get our personal ticket stamped, and to hell with anybody around us.  Oh, we’ll evangelize if we have to, but this is only to save other rugged individuals such as ourselves, who will come into a Church that is at best a pot luck, at worst a committee, and really just a gathering place for separate people saved separately.  But if we know anything about heaven, we know that it can not possibly be a committee.  And if we know anything about our own dysfunctional families, where Mom, Dad, and each kid is plugged into a different entertainment device, where dinner is not even pot luck, but catch-as-catch-can and never eaten together, where the father’s role is to keep peace in the way it is kept at a committee meeting where various agendas vie for contention, then we know that that too falls short of what it should be, and short of what heaven is.

Here’s what we know from Scripture: the Kingdom on Earth, the Church, is the Body of Christ, and we are His members.  And we know from the teachings of the Church that Communion is the most potent expression of this, and the most effective way to share in His body and to make this all happen.

Now at most of our parishes we have committee-think at best, dysfunction at worst (and not nearly enough pot lucks).  I have yet to experience any parish life where there’s a true sense of family, or of communion, of like-minded people worshipping together, of disciples celebrating the One they love.  But we do get a taste of this at the annual Chesterton conference.  And we see that such communion, such a gathering of people who love a saint because of the saint’s love of Christ, is a living thing.  It’s not just a group, it’s a culture – and culture is something that grows. 

The culture of the Church is the Body of Christ in motion.  This is why Dena, this is why any Christian, loves what happens at the Chesterton conference – or for that matter at the annual Portsmouth Institute Conference, or perhaps at any devout conference across this land.  The renewal of Christian culture, for which the St. Austin Review exists, is a renewal of an indispensable element of what we need to live eternally – and that is a gathering with others who give up their selfish agendas and together worship Christ, in literature, music, conviviality, and – amazingly – even in fun!

Having said all of this, my review of the Chesterton conference as an insider is this: IT WAS TREMENDOUS. 

The highlights included Nancy Brown’s speech on Frances Chesterton and on the mutual sacrifices that composed the Chesterton marriage; the astonishing witness of James O’Keefe, and the moral issues raised by this journalistic monk; Fr. Milward’s off-handed remark, “As I heard Evelyn Waugh say …”; the reaction to our play “Faith of our Father”; and the people – the wonderful people – who were there and who communed together under the stars drinking, smoking, talking, and celebrating a man who celebrated Christ.