“It to be a grave mistake to present Christianity as something charming and popular with no offense in it. Seeing that Christ went about the world giving the most violent offense to all kinds of people, it would seem absurd to expect that the doctrine of his person can be so presented as to offend nobody.”

Since one collection of essays by the late great Dorothy Sayers is titled The Whimsical Christian, let me begin with a whimsical personal story. A learned and well-read friend had shared a neat Sayers’ quote on a social media post of mine, but without further reference. Now to my way of thinking, not at least mentioning the book or article a quote comes from is an unforgivable sin.

I suspected where it might have come from, but I had to spend the next 10 minutes sniffing around, until I finally found it. So I pulled that volume off my shelves, and this article is a result of all that. But there was another good outcome: in the process I came upon another of my books that also quoted it, and in it was a ‘free coffee’ card!

Moral of the story: do not use ‘free coffee’ cards as bookmarks. But in this case I rebuked my friend for her grave sin of half-hearted referencing, and then I thanked her for the pleasant discovery en-route to finding out the source of the quote. (And to make it even more interesting, moments after I found this card another friend was quoting from the very book I had just found it in.)

So I pulled out the essay in question and reread it: Creed or Chaos? It was a talk she had delivered on May 4, 1940. Hodder & Stoughton released it as a booklet that year. It has appeared in various other forms since then. One of them that I also have is the aforementioned The Whimsical Christian (Macmillan, 1978), which first came out as Christian Letters to a Post-Christian World (Eerdmans, 1969). It contains 18 of her more important writings on theology and Christianity.

While she is quite well known for her Lord Peter Wimsey detection novels, her work as a lay theologian is top-notch and deserves widespread attention. I discuss her a bit more in this article: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2006/05/03/a-review-of-creed-without-chaos-exploring-theology-in-the-writings-of-dorothy-l-sayers-by-laura-simmons/

Here I want to simply offer a number of quotes from her brief essay. The 18-page piece opens with these words:

And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe not on me; Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.

-John 16:8-11

It is worse than useless for Christians to talk about the importance of Christian morality, unless they are prepared to take their stand upon the fundamentals of Christian theology. It is a lie to say that dogma does not matter; it matters enormously. It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is vitally necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe. It is hopeless to offer Christianity as a vaguely idealistic aspiration of a simple and consoling kind; it is, on the contrary, a hard, tough, exacting, and complex doctrine, steeped in a drastic and uncompromising realism. And it is fatal to imagine that everybody knows quite well what Christianity is and needs only a little encouragement to practice it. The brutal fact is that in this Christian country not one person in a hundred has the faintest notion what the Church teaches about God or man or society or the person of Jesus Christ.

If you think I am exaggerating, ask the army chaplains. Apart from a possible one per cent of intelligent and instructed Christians, there are three kinds of people we have to deal with. There are the frank and open heathen, whose notions of Christianity are a dreadful jumble of rags and tags of Bible anecdote and clotted mythological nonsense. There are the ignorant Christians, who combine a mild gentle-Jesus sentimentality with vaguely humanistic ethics – most of these are Arian heretics. Finally, there are the more or less instructed church-goers, who know all the arguments about divorce and auricular confession and communion in two kinds, but are about as well equipped to do battle on fundamentals against as a boy with a pea-shooter facing a fan-fire of machine guns. Theologically, this country is at present in a state of utter chaos, established in the name of religious toleration, and rapidly degenerating into the flight from reason and the death of hope. We are not happy in this condition, and there are signs of a very great eagerness, especially among the younger people, to find a creed to which they can give wholehearted adherence.

This is the Church’s opportunity, if she chooses to take it. So far as the people’s readiness to listen goes, she has not been in so strong a position for at least two centuries. The rival philosophies of humanism, enlightened self-interest, and mechanical progress have broken down badly; the antagonism of science has proved to be far more apparent than real; and the happy-go-lucky doctrine of laissez-faire is completely discredited. But no good whatever will be done by a retreat into personal piety or by mere exhortation to a recall to prayer.

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