SAYERS, Dorothy L(eigh) (1893–1957), British writer. A student
of medieval literature, she was one of the first women to receive a degree
from the University of Oxford. After working in a London advertising agency,
the setting for her later novel Murder Must Advertise (1933), she began to
write detective stories, beginning with Whose Body? (1923). It featured the
dashing, witty aristocrat-detective Lord Peter Wimsey, who solved the crimes
in her ten subsequent books. Works such as The Nine Tailors (1934), which
involves disquisitions on the art of ringing church bells, and Gaudy Night
(1935), set in a woman’s college at Oxford, are examples of Sayers’s
erudite, complexly plotted approach. Her other works include theological
studies and works on Dante and translations of his Divine Comedy (1949 and
1955).
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Quotes
Not Herod, not Caiaphas, not Pilate, not Judas ever contrived to fasten upon
Jesus Christ the reproach of insipidity; that final indignity was left for
pious hands to inflict. To make of His story something that could neither
startle, nor shock, nor terrify, nor excite, nor inspire a living soul is
to crucify the Son of God afresh and put Him to an open shame.
Dorothy Sayers
Of late years, the Church has not succeeded very well in preaching Christ;
she has preached Jesus, which is not quite the same thing. -- Dorothy Sayers
Books . . . are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then
we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages
of development.
Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) In "The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women,"
by Rosalie Maggio, 1994.
It is not the business of the church to adapt Christ to men, but men to Christ.
Dorothy Sayers
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Few things are more striking than the change which has taken place during
my own lifetime in the attitude of the intelligentsia towards the spokesmen
of Christian opinion. When I was a child, bishops expressed doubts about
the Resurrection, and were called courageous. When I was a girl, G. K. Chesterton
professed belief in the Resurrection, and was called whimsical. When I was
at college, thoughtful people expressed belief in the Resurrection "in a
spiritual sense", and were called advanced; (any other kind of belief was
called obsolete, and its professors were held to be simpleminded). When I
was middle-aged, a number of lay persons, including some poets and writers
of popular fiction, put forward rational arguments for the Resurrection,
and were called courageous. Today, any lay apologist for Christianity...
whose works are sold and read, is liable to be abused in no uncertain terms
as a mountebank, a reactionary, a tool of the Inquisition, a spiritual snob,
an intellectual bully, an escapist, an obstructionist, a psychopathic introvert,
an insensitive extrovert, and an enemy of society. The charges are not always
mutually compatible, but the common animus behind them is unmistakable, and
its name is fear. Writers who attack these domineering Christians are called
courageous.
-
... Dorothy L.
Sayers
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Setting aside the scandal caused by His Messianic claims and His reputation
as a political firebrand, only two accusations of personal depravity seem
to have been brought against Jesus of Nazareth. First, that He was a
Sabbath-breaker. Secondly, that He was "a gluttonous man and a winebibber,
a friend of publicans and sinners" -- or (to draw aside the veil of Elizabethan
English that makes it sound so much more respectable) that He ate too heartily,
drank too freely, and kept very disreputable company, including grafters
of the lowest type and ladies who were no better than they should be. For
nineteen and a half centuries, the Christian Churches have laboured, not
without success, to remove this unfortunate impression made by their Lord
and Master. They have hustled the Magdalens from the Communion-table, founded
Total Abstinence Societies in the name of Him who made the water wine, and
added improvements of their own, such as various bans and anathemas upon
dancing and theatre-going. They have transferred the Sabbath from Saturday
to Sunday, and, feeling that the original commandment "Thou shalt not work"
was rather half-hearted, have added to it the new commandment, "Thou shalt
not play."
... Dorothy L.
Sayers,
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