Happy Palm Sunday! This year is special for Christians because all the Christian calendars—Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant—have us celebrating Easter on April 20. Thus, all will be meditating on the passion of Jesus Christ this week—his suffering, death, and burial—in anticipation of the celebration of His rising from the dead to new life. The radio plays of Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), a great writer and friend of C.S. Lewis, are a great way to think through the Gospel accounts.
Sayers is perhaps more well known as a writer of detective fiction. She earned the title of one of the “Four Queens of Crime” during the period some call the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, when she wrote a series of stories about Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane still read and loved by millions of people.
But Sayers was more than just a writer of mysteries. A devout Anglican Christian, she was also a translator of Dante and a playwright who was most entranced by great theological mysteries.
Theological mysteries are different from detective fiction mysteries, however. In the former, we eventually know “whodunit”; the mysterious part is how it all fits together. In the latter, we already know God did it, but human reason can never fully comprehend how it all fits together. Sayers was particularly fascinated with the early Christian Council of Nicaea.
As Providence would have it, this year is the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. That event was when Christian bishops met together in the Anatolian Greek city of Nicaea (it’s now the Turkish city of Iznik) to determine how to understand the great mystery of the Incarnation. In particular, they had gathered to decide what to make of the preaching and teaching of an Egyptian priest named Arius.
Arius contended that Jesus Christ may have been more than a mere man, but He was certainly not God in the sense that His Father is God. He was more like the highest angel.
After much discussion and prayer, the bishops decided to condemn the “Arian” views and to write a new creed that would express the orthodox Christian answer to the question Jesus asked of His Disciples: “Who do you say that I am?”
The answer the bishops gave was resoundingly, “God in the flesh!” And they wrote a creed (statement or confession of belief) rejecting the “Arian” teaching that Jesus is homoiousion, meaning that He is of “similar” being, with God the Father.
They wrote instead that Jesus is homoousion with God the Father—one in being or “consubstantial.” That Nicene Creed was edited five decades later at the Council of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul—if you don’t know the song) in the form that Catholics, Orthodox, and many Protestants profess each week. Later Church councils and creeds affirmed and elaborated on the fundamental Christian truth that Jesus Christ, as that original creed put it, is “true God from true God” who also “became man” for our sakes.
This fundamental paradox at the heart of the Christian faith has fascinated many. The Son of God took on a full human nature and did not cease to be God. How do we understand that incredible truth?
Sayers, who had previously given a series of talks about the Nicene Creed and written a radio play about the birth of Jesus for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), was contacted in 1940—the toughest year for Britain in World War II—by Dr. James Welch, Director of Religious Programming for the networks. What he wanted Sayers to write was “a number of dramatic features for children, dealing with the Life of our Lord.”
Sayers agreed but demanded the following conditions: 1) the plays would have Christ himself be a character, and 2) all the characters, the Lord included, would speak in ordinary English and not “talk Bible.” That is, they would not speak in King James English.
We may be used to movie and television presentations of the Gospels in the way Sayers demanded, but it was a controversial decision in the England of 1940. Welch agreed anyway.
The Man Born to Be King was the result – 12 radio plays dealing with the life of Christ all the way to His Ascension into Heaven. They did cause the predicted controversy with some listeners but, for a great many others, they became the vehicle by which the greatest story ever told became comprehensible. The great mystery of how God became Man, what He did, what He suffered, and His triumphant return to a new and everlasting form of life took on new meaning for many who had heard the “Bible talk” without much comprehension.
Readers interested can listen to a variety of recordings of these plays, including a 1967 production on YouTube. Those who would like to read the plays and get more background information and helpful notes about the language and the decisions have a resource that might convince them to do what Sayers’ friend C.S. Lewis did every Holy Week: read through all the plays.
In 2023, Sayers scholar Kathryn Wehr, a writer, editor, musician, and (full disclosure) friend of mine, published a one-volume edition of the plays. The Man Born to Be King: Wade Annotated Edition is the fruit of years of research. It includes the texts of the plays, a foreword by Dr. Welch telling his side of the story of how these plays were produced, an introduction by Sayers, an index of Scripture used by Sayers, production notes on the plays, and extensive notes on the plays that quote from Sayers’ own letters and other secondary accounts.
But, as Hamlet said, “the play’s the thing.” What is it about Sayers’ plays that so captured audiences then and going forward? It wasn’t merely that Sayers used various forms of contemporary speech. (“Gangsterisms in Bible Play,” screeched one newspaper headline.) That had (and can still have, if done well) a serious point for a generation of Britons who no longer knew the stories. It was, however, more than that.
Sayers’ genius was that she had crafted a series of plays that rose above what often passed (and still passes) for religious drama. As she said in her own introduction to the plays, one of the main conditions is this: “in writing a play on this particular subject, the dramatist must rid himself of all edificatory and theological intentions. He must set out, not to instruct but to show forth; not to point a moral but to tell a story; not to produce a Divinity lesson with illustrations in dialogue, but to write a good piece of theatre.” The theology had to be thoroughly integrated into the story and not the “exterior end towards which his work is directed.” As a piece of advice to writers often attributed to Hollywood legend Samuel Goldwyn has it, “If you want to send a message, try Western Union.”
Sayers harmonizes the four Gospels into one story, imbuing it with a realism that gets the audience thinking about how easy it is to become a villain and how hard it must have been to understand what the Lord was saying. The Disciples are presented as young men who were sincere but, like most people, often too interested in their own status and grievances to listen to their Master adequately.
Judas Iscariot is not a cartoonish villain. Instead, he is a smart guy, an intellectual, who becomes convinced of his own notion of what the Messiah ought to be like.
Even minor characters in the Gospels are depicted in such a way as to indicate that, though walk-ons in the Gospel stories, they were living flesh-and-blood individuals with their own stories of sorrow, sin, and problems—the kind of people Jesus cared about and loved as if they were the only people in the world.
It is the character of Jesus himself that still resonates. While Sayers denied that it was ever possible for an artist to depict Him and His story in a truly adequate way (the mystery of the Incarnation always remains mysterious!) she was faithful to her art. The end result is a Jesus who seems like the kind of rabbi who is both a teacher whose authority is deeper than that of the scholars or scribes and a friend to those who are downhearted.
Sayers’ depiction of Him speaking to His friend Martha about her irritation with her sister, Mary, who has not been helping with the chores but is sitting close and listening to Jesus, is masterful. “Do you remember a story I told you the first time I ever came to visit you?” He asks. He then dives back into the story of the Prodigal Son, focusing this time on the resentful elder brother.
He is indeed the man born to be king, but His kingship is not of this world. That “not of this world” doesn’t mean that He will rule in heaven and not here on earth. It means that His kingship doesn’t operate by the same brute force that our kingships do. It is a kingdom of love that Jesus brings. A kingdom in which the king demands holiness and obedience from His people but sacrifices Himself for them even in their unholiness.
Not everything in these twelve plays will suit everyone. Some of the terminology and language that might have seemed authentic and ordinary in World War II Britain will seem outdated or corny to a modern audience. But these plays, based on a keen knowledge of the Gospels and a steady artistic hand, still have life in them.
Christians preparing for Easter this week would do well to read or listen to Sayers’ plays as they use imagination as well as reason to meditate on the great mystery of the Son of God becoming Man in order to live among us, teach us, and die for our sins.
David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. A past Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X (Twitter) @davidpdeavel.
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