A BELATED BIRTHDAY by Mike Crowl
Though I'm a year late in celebrating this particular birthday, I'd like to bring the centenary of a major Christian writer to your attention. Dorothy L Sayers is the writer.
When I mention her name to non-Christian book fans, I'm likely to find they think of her only as a popular crime writer. Her amateur detective-hero, Lord Peter Wimsey, is a chap who, (given the chance), can do just about anything. He's intelligent and athletic. He collects rare books and knows, at a glance, the genuine from the fake. Blindfolded, he names a particular wine by its taste - down to the year. In one of the short stories, he disguises himself for a mere two years in order to catch a notorious gang of thieves.
In one of the later books he marries Harriet Vane, who was also no dab hand at investigating crime. (Harriet Vane is considered to be a not unflattering portrait of Sayers herself.) A third character, Montague Egg, a salesman with an ability to see past the obvious, is now virtually forgotten, but the Lord Peter Wimsey stories have never been out of print since they were first published some seventy years ago.
Sayers' detective stories were written to keep her in bread, (and did that job very well), and not to be morality tales. There is little hint in these stories of her Christianity, unlike those of her contemporary, G K Chesterton, who wrote the Father Brown detective stories, and who is as likely to discuss God's judgement as to discover whodunnit.
Once Sayers had made her name and her fortune with Lord Peter Wimsey, she turned her attention to writing of a different kind. The most well-remembered piece now is the radio play, The Man Born to be King. This was considered a masterpiece in its day, and is still able to stand strong against more recent efforts on the same subject. The play was presented by the BBC in twelve parts, and was the first radio play to allow an actor to portray Jesus. (Previously His presence was only ever alluded to.) It aroused considerable controversy, with members of some churches calling down the judgement of God on those who dared to try and present Jesus in His humanity.
Sayers' great achievement, however, was to introduce Jesus not just as an important historical character, but as the man who was God. Unlike other BBC productions of the time, the various characters spoke with accents that reflected their different backgrounds: the Gallileans spoke a different dialect from the Jews.
Much of Sayers' other writing is now out of print. This is unfortunate, since the essays, such as those in Unpopular Opinions, are well ahead of their time in relation to Christian feminism and Sayer's views on how the church should behave.
Perhaps her best book, (there is still a US edition available), is The
Mind of the Maker. In it Sayers, to quote Catherine Kenney, develops
"a lucid, extended analogy between the Christian dogma of the Trinity and
the creative
activity of the
human being. In so doing, she not only elucidates `this fascinating and majestic
mystery' of the Holy Trinity, but also produces one of the most illuminating
inquiries into the creative process ever written." (The Remarkable Case
of Dorothy L Sayers, page 246.)
In this book Sayers made the Trinity clear to me for the first time - it's not the last word on the subject, but it goes a long way towards creating an accessible working model. Sayers was no unapproachable saint: she knew her faults - mostly - and was not one to suffer fools gladly. Her writing style falls, naturally enough, within the formality of the earlier part of this century; at times, too, she appears to be showing off her not inconsiderable knowledge. Nevertheless, her ideas, humour and good sense haven't dated, and her books are well-worth searching out in the Library, or borrowing off someone who was wise enough to acquire them while they were still available in bookshops!
copyright 1997 Mike Crowl
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If I was late then, I'm later still now....!