G.K. Chesterton on the Fundamental Significance of the Family

Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast, comments on an important book he is reading: The Story of the Family: G.K. Chesterton on the Only State That Creates and Loves Its Own Citizens, edited by Dale Ahlquist (Ignatius Press, 2022). In this compilation of texts from Chesterton, he shows that “society is built on the family.” He eloquently explains that one cannot free something from what it is by nature, including marriage and the family. You cannot free a marriage from the union of a man and a woman, the natural end of which is the bearing and rearing of children. There is no other social relation parallel to the natural and “mutual attraction of the sexes,” and by missing this point, the modern world has fallen into countless “vices and follies,” including same-sex sexuality and transgenderism. Chesterton shows that undercutting the “triangle of truisms, of father, mother, and child,” destroys any civilization that once cherished them. Seeking to thwart nature, we succeed only in cutting off the very limb on which we are seated. Ultimately, “the war against the family” is a “war against God and the Church.” The road back is through “the story of the family.”

See The Story of the Family: G.K. Chesterton on the Only State That Creates and Loves Its Own Citizens, edited by Dale Ahlquist (Ignatius Press, 2022) https://www.equip.org/product/cri-resource-the-story-of-the-family-g-k-chesterton-on-the-only-state-that-creates-and-loves-its-own-citizens/