Kairos Journal has posted several quotes from Dorothy Sayers on
the importance and value of doctrine. Her words are as pertinent and valuable today as they were 60 or so years ago. Here are a couple of the quotes:
Official Christianity, of late years, has been having what is known as a bad press. We are constantly assured that the churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine—dull dogma as people call it. The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man—and the dogma is the drama.
. . . . for the cry today is: “Away with the tedious complexities of dogma—let us have the simple spirit of worship; just worship, no matter of what!” The only drawback to this demand for a generalized and undirected worship is the practical difficulty of arousing any sort of enthusiasm for the worship of nothing in particular.
Dorothy Sayers,
Letters to a Diminished Church: Passionate Arguments for the Relevance of Christian Doctrine 
(Nashville: W. Publishing Group, 2004), 1, 15.
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It is good to hear that your father will make a full recovery. Times like these remind us of the great power found in prayer.
I love this quote. It reminds me of a point Brian McLaren tries to get across in A Generous Orthodoxy. He calls for less doctrine in an effort to get back to just worshipping Jesus. But if we do such a thing, would we still be worshipping Jesus? In order to serve and worship Jesus, we must know Him as he is revealed in Scripture. And thus we must know the great doctrines found within Scripture.
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