Volume 49, Issue 3/4, Fall/Winter 2023 Christopher Dawson Special Issue G.K. Chesterton & Christopher Dawson: On Conversion & the Relationship Between Christ & Culture Anthony Gannaio & Garrett W. Potts Introduction G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) and Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) represent two successive generations of Catholic converts. While each of their conversion stories is unique, both figures affirm the goodness of Being, exhibit rebellious attitudes against modern liberal forms of spirituality, and possess a belief in the transformative work of the Spirit of God in the life of the individual believer and the world. This is motivated by a shared feature in their conversion stories. Namely, Chesterton and Dawson mutually find that traditional Christian values have become diluted in the wake of modernity and at the hands of liberal Protestantism. To the extent that liberal forms of Christianity sought to accommodate particular tenets of modernity, such as individualism and rationalism, each figure experienced a crisis of faith. Christianity became less, not more, compelling for them wherever it sought to accommodate modern spiritual attitudes. Thus, rather than accepting the presuppositions of liberal Protestantism, which sought to synthesize modern principles with traditional Christian beliefs, Chesterton and Dawson reacted against this tendency, instead seeking refuge in the Roman Catholic church. In Roman Catholicism, they discovered a resilient institution that has been able to resist the tides of secular culture because it has not been as diluted by modern beliefs. For Protestants and Catholics alike, their stories serve as a prophetic warning about how accommodationist tendencies ought to be resisted by the church in order for Christianity to represent a historically unfolding reality rather than a mere sentiment or a taste. The way that each of these figures contended with accommodationist tendencies raises essential questions about the relationship between Christ and culture and how Christian writers ought to wrestle with the dominant culture of their time.