Only One King

Sayers's The Man Born to Be King

At Regent College I’m teaching “Reading as a Spiritual Practice,” drawn from my Reading for the Love of God, but in particular from the bookmark on Dorothy L. Sayers and how she read the Bible. In preparation for the course, I was re-reading The Man Born to Be King, Sayers’s cycle of plays based on the life of Christ which aired on the BBC from Dec 1941- Oct 1942. There are many ways an artist could have approached an adaptation of the Gospels; for instance, The Chosen is likely different in theme from Sayers’s plays (I have to admit that I’ve never seen it). For Sayers, influenced by the war on the European continent with fascist dictators contending for power, she emphasizes Christ as KING.