Dorothy Sayers: Why Work?

I did not realize until the other day that Dorothy Sayers’s classic, foundational, and fantastic essay on work is online.

This is one of the most helpful articles on work that I’ve read. Keller and many others refer to it often as well.

And, we still need to fulfill the challenge she lays down in it. She says at one point “the Christian church desperately needs a theology of work.” We’ve been doing better in the last ten years (some fantastic efforts are listed below), but don’t let the existence of some great new books on this fool you. We still have a long way to go in actually working this these truths into our hearts and lives.

Here’s one of the best quotes from Sayers’ essay:

It is not right for the Church to acquiesce in the notion that a man’s life is divided into the time he spends on his work and the time he spends in serving God. He must be able to serve God in his work, and the work itself must be accepted and respected as the medium of divine creation.”

Here are some of the best books that have begun to give us a much better, articulate, and biblically grounded doctrine of work in recent days:

• How then Should We Work?: Rediscovering the Biblical Doctrine of Work, by Hugh Whelchel
• Significant Work: Discover the Extraordinary Worth of What You Do Every Day, by Paul Rude
• Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, by Tim Keller
• Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work, by Tom Nelson

And here are some websites that I highly recommend:

• The Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics and their blog, Creativity, Purpose, Freedom
• The Acton Institute and their blog.
• Work Matters

Question: What other books and websites would you suggest?