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As Chesterton developed his personal philosophy, he faced the professional challenge of stimulating and provoking his readers without alienating either them or his long-suffering editor, A.G. Gardiner. The balance grew more precarious as he gravitated further from the Liberalism most of his readers embraced and closer to earthy traditions they deemed retrograde.

Chesterton's brother, Cecil, described the situation this way in 1908: "Thousands of peaceful semi-Tolstoian Nonconformists have for six years, been compelled to listen every Saturday morning to a fiery apostle preaching … War, Drink and Catholicism."

In fact, Chesterton did not preach Catholicism, or any coherent system, in his early career. He was still working out the details of faith and philosophy, wondering where his fundamental commitments to gratitude and against modern skepticism would lead. He and his readers would soon find out.

Behind the scenes of his professional success, a number of personal factors pulled Chesterton toward orthodox Christianity and, eventually, Roman Catholicism.

Taking a first step in the direction of faith, Chesterton realized that the gift of life, for which he had grown so grateful, must have been given by someone. "The truth presented itself to me, rather, in the form that where there is anything there is God," he wrote.

Chesterton had help in taking the second step toward faith.

In 1896, he met and became enamored with Frances Blogg, an officer of a London debating salon. Chesterton admired her confidence and discovered that it was rooted in her devout High Anglican faith. Her religion was "the unique quality that cut her off from the current culture and saved her from it."

Chesterton credited Frances with leading him from his vestigial Unitarianism to Anglicanism. But even though he was moving toward High Anglicanism at the time of their 1901 marriage, he still had a clearer sense of what he rejected than of what he believed. His criticism of modern theology and philosophy, laid out in Heretics (1905), left his affirmation of orthodox Christianity largely implied.

Chesterton finally asserted his faith in 1908 with Orthodoxy. In this book, he defines orthodox Christianity as the "philosophy of sanity" and shows how Christian beliefs answer deep modern problems.

For example, because Christians believe in an Incarnation, they believe in matter, spirit, and interaction between the two. This gives Christians respect for both the rational and mystical aspects of life. It also saves them from the radical doubts that nearly drove Chesterton mad in art school.

Furthermore, the historical doctrines of Christianity, so often blamed for blinding people from reality, actually reveal reality by keeping believers from blinding themselves with personal heresies. Fancy new schemes for understanding the world simply cannot compete with orthodoxy's tradition of defining dogmas. That tradition, he wrote, has not "told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing."

Truth is not the only thing Christian orthodoxy lavishes on its followers. In the "old theology [rather] than the new," Chesterton wrote, "we get wonder, curiosity, moral and political adventure, righteous indignation-Christendom." And, of utmost importance to Chesterton, Christians also get a Creator to whom they can express their gratitude.

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