So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

• Genesis 1:27

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

• Galatians 3:28

Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.

• 1 Peter 3:7

SPOILER ALERT WARNING

If you intend to read this book, the following may give away the mystery

But not much of one this time.

“Miss Cattermole was understood to say, rather incoherently, that she hated College and loathed Oxford, and felt no responsibility towards those institutions.
“Then why,” said Harriet, “are you here?”
“I don’t want to be here; I never did. Only my parents were so keen. My mother’s one of those people who work to get things open to women -you know – professions and things. And father’s a lecturer in a small provincial University. And they’ve made a lot of sacrifices and things.”
Harriet thought Miss Cattermole was probably the sacrificial victim.” …

• Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

“When I was asked to come and speak to you, your Secretary made the suggestion that she thought I must be interested in the feminist movement. I replied- a little irritably, I am afraid- that I was not sure I wanted to ‘identify myself,’ as the phrase goes, with feminism, and that the time for ‘feminism,’ in the old-fashioned sense of the word, had gone past. In fact, I think I went so far as to say that, under present conditions, an aggressive feminism might do more harm than good. As a result I was, perhaps not unnaturally, invited to explain myself.
I do not know that it is very easy to explain, without offence or risk of misunderstanding, exactly what I do mean, but I will try. The question of “sex-equality” is, like all questions affect-ing human relationships, delicate and complicated. It cannot be settled by loud slogans or hard-and-fast assertions like “a woman is as good as a man” – or “woman’s place is the home” – or “women ought not to take men’s jobs.” The minute one makes such assertions, one finds one has to qualify them. “A woman is as good as a man” is as meaningless as to say, … “a poet is as good as an engineer” or “an elephant is as good as a racehorse” – it means nothing whatever until you add: “at doing what?””

• Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human? (a talk given to a women’s society in 1938

Boilerplate

In this mini-series, I will fulfill a promise.  Some time ago, published 14 January 2025, I wrote a brief synopsis of the book, Subversive by Crystal Downing.  The post is called A Subversive Christian.  In that book, I talked about the three books in the photo above.  And I especially wanted to do a mini-series on the book on the right, The Gospel in Dorothey L. Sayers.

Note that the title uses the preposition “in.”  Dorothy L. Sayers did not write a fifth gospel.  She did not write as if inspired directly by God.  The canon of Scripture is complete.

But in stating what this is not, then what is it?  All Christians have the Holy Spirit within them, guiding them.  When being a Christian is something you have inside you and through you, then your life will reflect that.  This book is how you can see various aspects of the Christian life in the works of Dorothy L. Sayers, mystery novels, plays, letters, and essays.

After the Introduction, it starts with Whose Body?  The editor’s attribute of a Christian that she focuses on is “Conscience.” Whose Body? is her first detective fiction novel featuring her main character, Lord Peter Wimsey.  Then in Death Must Advertise, we find Lord Peter has a couple of middle names.  His full name is Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey.

But we will stay in the Introduction for more than a week.  There are at least a half dozen quotes just in the introduction that look interesting.  I am not in a hurry to speed through this book.  I was not in a hurry to start it with me being over a year since I promised to make it into a mini-series.

But I would hope people could read my short stories and see the gospel being acted out in the characters in my fictional stories.  Deviled Yeggs grew up in a family of safe crackers, robbing from others.  He set out as a policeman, and then homicide detective, to redeem the family name but learning each person must have Christ redeem them individually.  Deviled’s wife, Trinity Naomi Tesla (TNT) Yeggs, was nicknamed “Nitroglycerin” (Glyce for short) by her parents because she was explosive when shaken.  But she found calm and peace in her husband’s arms, and eventually she found the same comfort and peace in the arms of Jesus as she faced “shaky” experiences.

Even when not writing about Jesus directly, the Good News (Gospel) appears in many ways in what a Christian writes.  Let’s enjoy this journey with possibly my favorite author (outside the Bible with C.S. Lewis in a tie with her), Dorothy L. Sayers.

Discussion

We are still not done with Gaudy Night.

In the two quoted writings, we see a glimpse into Ms. Sayers’ attitude toward women’s liberation.  She warned that any type of change would not all be good.  And then how do you define women’s liberation makes a great deal of difference what the goal of women’s liberation was.

As I am rewatching Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, presently in the fourth season, a male cast member said something at the “party” that he had been taking note of the activities of the women’s liberation movement, and it seems their central theme was to burn women’s under garments.  Then he gasped, maybe that was their goal all along!

If burning bras was the goal, they burned a lot of them, but the manufacturers continue to make them.  So, did they accomplish anything?  There are more women CEOs out there, but studies show that they make less than their male counterparts.

And that was the point of the title of Ms. Sayers’ essay, speech.  If you are doing the same job and the same quality of work, the pay should be the same.  If not, then are you asking whether a woman is human or not?

I remember one day on a construction project in Germany.  A female truck driver pulled up to a trailer that was parked across the street from the gymnasium that we were renovating.  Renovation is not the right word.  We were taking a males only gymnasium and converting it into a men’s and women’s gymnasium with separate showers and restrooms.  And the standard renovations went along with that.

We watched as the woman backed the truck to within a foot of the trailer’s hook up.

We were all impressed at how she backed up so accurately with no one there to guide her back.  I had some very muscular men in my platoon.  They could have helped her at this point, but they were mumbling, “There is no difference in pay scale for men and women.  If she has a truck driver MOS, she should be able to do this by herself.”  Note: We should have been working ourselves as construction workers (carpenters, masons, electricians, and plumbers – our drivers worked to their abilities or assisted the others.)

The woman came back to see how close she was.  The trailer was fully loaded, but she lifted the tongue and rolled the trailer to the spot where she placed the trailer tongue loop into the hitch.  She locked it in place and then hooked up the taillights.  As she walked back to the truck cab, all my guys applauded.  She turned red, but then she laughed when I yelled for them to get back to work.

That part of women’s liberation, which is still not accomplished in many fields, has a corollary.  If you are doing the same thing, you should be paid the same.  And even in the Army, there is a pay scale based on time in service and rank.  So, not all drivers get paid the same.  But with the same number of years of military service and at a specific rank, there is no consideration of gender.  But, as my platoon needed to know, if they get paid the same, they should be able to perform the minimal duties of the job adequately.

Ms. Sayers understood that her expressed view was controversial.  Sure equal pay for equal work, but an elephant has different attributes to a horse.  In getting one or the other, why are you needing the animal should be the first question to ask.  You can ride either one.  But in lifting a heavy load, the elephant might be better.  If speed is the focus, maybe the horse is better.  And do not get me started with the differences in a poet and an engineer.  The classic engineer joke is a great illustration.  The engineer graduate says, “When I started skool, I couldn’t spell ‘engineeer,’ now I are one.”  And the joke, in most cases is fairly accurate.  And before you ask, I are an engineer myself.

I could go on, but let me end before I dig a hole that I cannot get out of.  If we have a gender bias on our pay scale, is Ms. Sayers question valid?  Are you saying that women are not human, thus we can pay them less for the same work?

Closing Prayer

Father, guide me.  I remember the young lady who was driving me to Heidelberg to have two teeth extracted.  She stopped at the door and demanded that the officer and gentleman would hold the door for her, both in leaving the building and in getting in the car.  Since I was coming out of anesthesia, she helped me into the car on the return trip.  With women’s liberation, common courtesies in my youth have been forgotten.  I find we are less loving as we jettison such things.  We should respect all people.  We should treat others as humans and never give them reason to think that they are less of a human than we are.  It is part of what Jesus taught about being a leader.  We must serve others.
In Thy Name I pray.
Amen

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.