Dorothy L. Sayers has been called the "the most significant female British Christian intellectual of the twentieth century." A contemporary of C. S. Lewis, she possessed keen theological sense, tremendous writing skill, and deep concern about how ordinary people understand Christian life. Creed without Chaos provides a cogent argument for Sayers’s continuing relevance for today’s church. This well-researched book examines Sayers’s role as a lay theologian in clarifying matters of dogma for common consumption and in relating theological themes to everyday life.

Laura Simmons performs a service for theology students and interested laypeople alike by providing a theological, rather than a literary, introduction to Sayers’s writings. The book also includes several detailed appendices for those interested in further study.

In this superb commentary on Sayers, Laura Simmons brilliantly helps church members and leaders of all sorts recover the task of speaking biblical truth clearly. Not only did this book inspire me immensely with Sayers’s (and Simmons’s) keen theological insights into such topics as how the writing process illustrates the Trinity, but it also offers great suggestions for future study of Sayers. A concise glossary of recurrent doctrinal deviations helps us avoid and combat them, and encouraging excerpts from Sayers’s letters show us the kind of people we need to be to serve God in our present circumstances. This is an exceedingly timely book.–Marva J. Dawn, teaching fellow in spiritual theology, Regent College, Vancouver

As the institutional church falters, lay theology becomes increasingly important, infusing dogma with new life. In twentieth-century England, the list of such lay thinkers was impressive–Chesterton, Lewis, Eliot, and the least known of this group, Dorothy Sayers. With the publication of Creed without Chaos, readers now have access to the breadth of Sayers’s theology, particularly as expressed in her voluminous letters. In the process, Simmons has provided an important resource for America’s twenty-first-century church.–Robert K. Johnston, professor of theology and culture, Fuller Theological Seminary