Mission - Goals - Rationale

Mission

Chesterton House exists to facilitate discovery of the intellectual riches of the historic Christian faith, thereby empowering more faithful Christian living.

Goals

• Discipleship: To cultivate Christian thinking about life, learning and culture
• Mentoring: To increase the pipeline of young Christian scholars
• Apologetics: To provide a credible witness to the intellectual integrity of the historic Christian faith

Rationale

The Scriptural command to love God with all one's mind suggests that intellectual activity is a way to glorify God. Christians also have a duty to participate in the creation and critique of cultural forms that influence everyday lives. Thoughtful Christian engagement with culture avoids the pitfalls of retreat, accommodation, and triumphalism.

Academia has become the driving source behind ideas that find their expression in the arts, media, business, government, secondary education, and all spheres of society. This is true not only domestically but internationally, as large numbers of international students come to the United States for graduate studies.

Postmodernism brings a new appreciation for the relevance of one's "positionality" as it bears upon academic inquiry. Further, to the extent that academia is influenced by a postmodern despair of reasonable discourse, Christianity is positioned to be a defender of reason and considered discourse.

American evangelicals have not always sustained serious intellectual reflection on nature and culture. This failure has led to an abandonment of universities and "high" culture, as well as a compartmentalization of faith rather than an integration of faith with academic inquiry.

Recently, there has been a resurgence of Christian scholarship and quality commentary on culture, as evidenced by periodicals such as Books and Culture and Mars Hill Audio Journal. Christian students stand to benefit from being introduced to such quality works, which they otherwise may not naturally encounter.