Dorothy Sayers

She worked for a London ad agency by day, writing jingles for Colman’s Mustard and Guinness Beer. She coined the phrase, “It pays to advertise.” By night, Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) wrote mystery novels during the male-dominated golden age of British detective fiction in the 1920’s and 30’s. She made her debut with the novel Whose Body? in 1923. It was the beginning of the Lord Peter Wimsey detective series, and she cranked out twelve novels in a span of fourteen years. She was asked in 1937 to write a play to be performed in church. Zeal for Thy House was a popular and controversial drama that took aim at lukewarm Christianity. It thrust this successful detective writer into the religious world. Sayers was repeatedly asked about her Christian faith, and she responded with an article that appeared in the British Sunday Times, “The Greatest Divine Event Staged is the Official Creed of Christendom.” She insisted in the interview that the story of Christianity is the most remarkable of tales, but the church has tamed and subdued it. She wrote, “Let us, in Heaven’s name, drag out the Divine Drama from under the dreadful accumulation of slip-shod thinking and trashy sentiment heaped upon it, and set it on an open stage to startle the world into some sort of vigorous reaction. If the pious are the first to be shocked, so much the worse for the pious–others will pass into the Kingdom of Heaven.” She devoted much of the second half of her writing career informing readers that Jesus is far more substantial and subversive than the church of her day recognized. She wrote a Hymn for the “Contemplation of Sudden Death” that appeared in the Oxford magazine and serves as the basis of today’s prayer: