Letters to a Diminished Church

Letters to a Diminished Church: Passionate Arguments for the Relevance of Christian Doctrine by Dorothy Sayers, 275 pages

Best known as the creator of master detective Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy Sayers was also a playwright, a translator of Dante, and a Christian apologist.  The essays collected here reflect all those aspects of her life and work, but primarily they are attempts to refocus Christians on the truths of the faith and the implications of those truths.  A constant theme in Sayers' thought is the nature of God as Creator and the analogy to human creativity.

Although written for a Christian audience and assuming at least a tentative belief in orthodox Christianity, Sayers held an expansive view of the Church and its mission, and the essays include warnings against the language of consumerist gluttony, and against "a social system based upon Envy and Avarice."  Best of all is the concluding essay, "Problem Pictures", in which Sayers explains why social problems cannot be solved like detective stories or mathematical equations, because human issues require creative work, not a political or technological magic pill.