Literature

The Open Front Door ~ The Imaginative Conservative

People who read books of this kind usually expect the author to answer the question: “Why did you become a Roman Catholic?” I am not trying to explain it, but I must try to illustrate it by an example. It was as if I had been a man homeless and needing shelter, who first of […]

The Romantic Reaction ~ The Imaginative Conservative

C.S. Lewis thought that “Romanticism” had acquired so many different meanings that, as a word, it had become meaningless “and should be banished from our vocabulary.” But is Lewis right? In the “Afterword” to the third edition of The Pilgrim’s Regress C.S. Lewis complained that “Romanticism” had acquired so many different meanings that, as a […]

A Conversation ~ The Imaginative Conservative

Peco Gaskovski’s “Exogenesis” has been described as “Blade Runner meets the Benedict Option.” In the novel, a thousand-mile metropolis named Lantua has emerged from the collapse of the USA. Artificial birthing and strict reproductive control is enforced with hi-tech social conditioning, 24-7 monitoring by the state, and the total loss of freedom, disguised by smooth […]

Our Father’s House ~ The Imaginative Conservative

God is the complete satisfaction of our need to know and to love. He is all Truth, utterly lovable. But God must be known for what He is, else an appropriate response to Him cannot be made. Philosophy and theology tell us, but not so effectively as does Dante, who has made us see what […]

Return to Chesterton ~ The Imaginative Conservative

The question I should like at least to open is whether G.K. Chesterton had not both the deeper and greater mysticism, a mysticism closer to that of the saints, and a message far more valuable for the millions whose place is on the plains of daily effort and not on the mountains of asceticism and […]

Imagining the Epiphany ~ The Imaginative Conservative

The late Steve Masty’s “The Test of the Magi” is a novel that displays a powerful religious imagination and a profound knowledge of the history and cultures of the ancient world, as well as personal experience with the geography and anthropology of the middle east. The Test of the Magi, by Johannes Bergmann (254 pages, […]