Two shocks broke on us this past week: Pearl Harbour and The Man Born to be King.

– Frederick Ogilvie, Director-General of the BBC¹

On 10 December 1941, only a few days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dorothy L. Sayers, best known for her Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels, spoke at a press conference held at the Berners Hotel, London. Here, she read an excerpt from the fourth installment of her forthcoming radio play-cycle on the story of Christ, The Man Born to Be King. The first play, based on the nativity, was to be broadcast on the BBC the Sunday before Christmas, and this press conference was meant to give the listening public a taste of what was to come. Instead, following a reading of a dialogue where the disciple Matthew speaks in a working-class Cockney accent and uses American slang, a firestorm broke out among the press. The Daily Mail ran the sensational headline “BBC Life of Christ Play in U.S. Slang” and the Daily Herald falsely reported “Gangsterisms in Bible Play” (Briggs 567). After reading the newspaper accounts of the forthcoming broadcasts, extreme Protestant groups such as the Lord’s Day Observance Society (LDOS) and the Protestant Truth Society began protesting Sayers’ play-cycle, writing letters to the BBC, the Ministry of Information (MOI), and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and running an advert in The Times with the heading “Radio Impersonation of Christ!”2 Due to the public outcry and the desire to avoid any unnecessary religious controversy, the MOI’s Brendan Bracken requested that Sayers’ radio plays be reviewed by the Central Religious Advisory Committee (CRAC), who, after reading the scripts, overwhelmingly approved the productions. Even those committee members who raised doubts about the broadcasts ruled in favor of Sayers’ play-cycle as they neither wanted to set a precedent of appeasing fringe religious organizations like the LDOS, nor offend Britain’s main ally and newcomer to the war by suggesting that American English was beneath the dignity of the disciples (Brabazon 204).

While this second reason may initially seem irrelevant, given that Sayers’ broadcasts were intended for a national audience, this point actually gets at the heart of a larger British self-marketing problem that impacted mass media and cultural productions. As Marina MacKay notes, one of the biggest propaganda battles Britain faced at the outset of the war was a national “rebranding” campaign, which, bolstered by MOI propaganda, depicted Britain’s struggles as a “‘people’s war’” that relied upon the “mythology of classless civilian solidarity” (MacKay 23).³ Standing somewhere between MOI-sanctioned and independent art, Sayers’ yearlong (21 December 1941–18 October 1942) radio serial The Man Born to Be King offered the BBC a tremendous opportunity to recast Britain in favorable terms, these being that the nation was historically egalitarian and Christian (much like the U.S.). Promoting such a positive, albeit fictional, image of Britain to its national listeners was an important step in a larger propaganda campaign that aimed to court U.S. support of Britain’s war effort and show Americans that they were, in the words of radio broadcaster J.B. Priestley, “like us” (13).⁴

For Sayers, rebranding Britain as egalitarian required a nationwide lesson in Christian doctrine through the broadcasting of God’s word. These religious radio plays, however, did not sit well with all listeners, particularly marginal Protestant groups. One of the main factors leading to these groups’ extreme response was the assumption that radio broadcasting and war were linked. In Sayers’ broadcasts, however, religion, or more accurately a fear of divine retribution, was infused into this correlation: some of the public believed that broadcasting the play-cycle was such a blasphemy that Britain’s defeat in Singapore in February 1942 was a punishment from God. As the BBC’s former Director of Religious Broadcasting J.W. Welch recalls, some critical responses to The Man Born to Be King claimed “that Singapore fell because these plays were broadcast, and [critics] appealed for them to be taken off before a like fate came to Australia” (33). Although responses like these were in the minority, they were frequent and vehement
enough that the Director-General of the BBC equated the shock value of The Man Born to Be King with the astonishing attack on Pearl Harbor.            

For Sayers, giving a voice to Jesus over the radio was an entertaining means of educating the public on Christian dogma, thereby strengthening the religious and cultural values of Britain at a time when these values were being assaulted by Nazi Germany.⁹ But by attempting to strengthen what she believed to be British values, Sayers also participated in a larger re-narration of Britain’s national identity, to which a number of writers, directors, and artists (both MOI-sanctioned and not) were contributing.

In reading Sayers’ The Man Born to Be King as part of Britain’s larger re-branding campaign, I argue that the mythical image of a Britain unified through the trans-historical radio voice of Christ speaks to more than the British public. Building upon the work of Mia Spiro, who writes in Anti-Nazi Modernism that “British […] writers and intellectuals were in conversation with European politics, and their works were far more integrated with international concerns” than they may at first appear (4), I show Sayers to be an example of a larger movement within British late-modernism toward transnationalism. In order to create a national “Christian” image, Sayers defined other national cultures through the language of opposition. The division between ally and enemy in the play-cycle, however, is complicated by Britain’s imperial past and Sayers’ militaristic presentation of the Gospels. This martial depiction of Christ is partly due to what Siân Nicholas refers to as the BBC’s “‘military’ character;”¹⁰ but it is also due to the play-cycle’s allegorical structure (109). In effect, Sayers’ plays invited listeners to imagine Christ as a religious leader who eschewed military conflict in the first century; yet by giving Christ and his message a voice during the Second World War, Sayers also contradicts the traditional image of a pacifist Christ. Instead, under Sayers’ direction, Jesus was transformed into a militarized Messiah promoting a Britain unified by the Christian faith as an antidote to German Nazism.

Before discussing The Man Born to Be King as partaking in Britain’s larger rebranding campaign, however, Sayers’ polarizing decision to have Jesus voiced on air needs addressing. I am specifically concerned with the criticism of the Lord’s Day Observance Society (LDOS), whose confused mixing of visual and aural language to describe the blasphemy of voicing Christ has yet to be fully considered. The LDOS’s mixing of senses not only questions the long-held philosophical division between the aural and the visual,¹¹ but also calls attention to the symbiotic relationship between sight and sound that emerges with radio broadcasting, thereby enabling propaganda, and specifically The Man Born to Be King, to become a more effective wartime tool.¹²

When the LDOS published their complaints against The Man Born to Be King in The Times on 30 December 1941, Sayers’ Jesus had not yet spoken on air. With the first play, the nativity scene, already broadcasted (in which the character of Christ had no speaking lines), the LDOS was making one last attempt to outrage the public and convince the BBC that Sayers’ play-cycle was an assault against the Christian religion. Throughout this advertisement (Fig. 1), the LDOS makes a fascinating claim about the medium of radio, a claim that was overlooked when CRAC and the BBC approved the plays for production. 

Specifically, the LDOS’s protest argues that Sayers’ broadcast amounted to an “impersonation of Christ,” thereby implying that when a voice is heard over the radio, the character and appearance of the voice is also suggested to a listening audience. For the LDOS, this personification of Christ on air was “blasphemous” and “irreveren[t]” and broke the Third Commandment (taking the Lord’s name in vain), by speaking on behalf of God. Strangely, the LDOS did not choose to mention the Second Commandment (not making a carven image or likeness of God), which would have been more appropriate given their use of the term “impersonation.” This confusion of sight and sound continues throughout the advertisement, and toward the end of Rev. H.H. Martin’s letter to the BBC, which is included in the protest, he states that the BBC should “refrain from staging on the wireless this revolting imitation of the voice of our Divine Saviour and Redeemer.” From this line it is apparent that Martin and the LDOS were confused by more than just the senses; they are also puzzled by the medium of radio itself, and suggest that a physical production in a theater is akin to a play created for radio.

Luckily for Sayers and the BBC, the Lord Chamberlain’s Office made a more decisive distinction between the stage and radio—between the mediums of sight and sound. It was determined that because the character of Jesus was to be heard on the air, no impersonation was taking place. However, the Lord Chamberlain warned that if the productions were to be translated for the stage or screen (be it film or television) the ruling would be very different (Welch 33).¹³ Thus, in order for The Man Born to Be King to be broadcast, a division had to be made between sight and sound; the radio had to be declared strictly an aural medium. This is certainly a distinction that has been made since the play-cycle’s production, most famously perhaps by Marshall McLuhan, who notes a difference between television as a “cool” medium that stimulates multiple senses and radio as a “hot” medium “that extends one single sense in ‘high definition’” (36). But the claim that radio is exclusively an aural medium at the expense of the visual sense is an inaccurate depiction of the way the medium really works.

For Sayers, Christ was the ultimate “absent other,” and thus perfect for radio. In its presence-absence paradox, the radio mirrors the message of Christianity: God is near even when there is no physical sign. The very form of radio, therefore, emphasized Sayers’ religious message.¹⁷

The skepticism and confusion of the disciples throughout The Man Born to Be King reflects what Sayers believed to be an epidemic of disbelief and disillusion among her fellow Britons. Therefore, when Jesus speaks to his disciples in the play-cycle, Sayers also intended that he speak to the listening audience at home. Sayers, who makes numerous analogies between the time of Christ and 1940s Europe, positions the audience as the new disciples who, after hearing these broadcasts and the Gospel of Christ, are meant to go and share the good news. But this play-cycle was not only meant to be religious instruction; instead, the broadcasts had a very specific wartime function: Britain’s literal and spiritual rebirth. Sayers believed that the future of Britain depended upon a resurgence of Christianity and a belief in and understanding of the Christian doctrine. World War II was an opportunity to re-imagine the world—“not an end,” according to Sayers, “but a beginning” (Begin 11).¹⁹ Yet for Sayers the beginning could only emerge if the British recognized that the war being fought was, at its core, a holy war. This position was one she shared with the BBC’s religious department, whose goal, according to the 1942 BBC Handbook was “‘to expound the Christian faith in terms that [could] easily be understood by ordinary men and women, and to examine the ways in which that faith [could] be applied,’” especially in a time of war (qtd. in Bray 29).

A Christ for World War II

It is likely that The Man Born to Be King was always intended to be political propaganda. In 1940, one year before the BBC began broadcasting the play-cycle, Sayers published the wartime essay, Begin Here, which illustrates just how intertwined she believed religion and politics to be. Throughout this essay, Sayers claims that Germany and Britain belong to very different histories—Germany’s being Anglo Saxon and pagan, and Britain’s being “Western, Mediterranean, and Christian”—and therefore, she states, it is no surprise that the two nations are at war (Bray 31).²⁰ Although she fails to argue convincingly for the religious divisions between the two nations, not least because she ignores Germany’s role in the Protestant Reformation, this essay is pivotal to understanding Sayers’ interpretation of World War II as a religious struggle.²¹ Even the language she uses to describe the impact the war was having on Britain’s cultural foundations mixes images of aerial bombings (an event with which the London-based Sayers was all too familiar) and the language of the Gospels. As she writes: “War, by dropping a metaphorical bomb into the structure of our lives, puts our foundations to a critical test, and offers an unequalled opportunity for finding out whether our house was built upon rock or upon sand” (qtd. in Bray 20-21). By referencing Matthew 7:24-27 here, Sayers suggests that the Second World War is a religious trial for the British population, a time to discover whether or not the nation is built upon the Christian ideals that will keep its foundations strong. It is her position that the only means of saving British culture is to fight for Christianity, upon which, she insists, British culture was built.

Sayers was not alone in depicting the war in religious terms. Phyllis Lassner suggests that this viewpoint was common among British women writers, including Phyllis Bottome, Ethel Mannin, and Vera Brittain. For Bottome in particular, Christianity was at the root of the conflict: “‘The really stubborn core of what Hitler is fighting against in Great Britain is the unconscious Christianity of the British people’” (qtd. in Lassner 42). Such religious positioning was also used by the MOI and the Minister of Information, Duff Cooper, as well as other members of Churchill’s cabinet. As Ian McLaine indicates, the MOI felt little concern about bringing religion into their representation of the conflict. In fact, they viewed it as necessary:

Films also depicted the war as a religious struggle, often through indirect means. Take, for example, Leslie Howard’s Pimpernel Smith (1941) in which a Nazi officer exclaims, “In Nazi Germany, no one can hope to be saved by anybody.” Although speaking about the rescue of prisoners from concentration camps, this line takes on religious implications when, at the end of the film, the protagonist declares that Germany is “pagan.”²²

Because Sayers interpreted the war as essentially a struggle for Christianity, The Man Born to Be King should also be read as propaganda. The plays were part of the BBC’s “white” propaganda campaign that sought to “influence hearts and minds” and “foster […] the British people’s innate will to win” (Nicholas 2-3). With the play-cycle, therefore, the radio, already a mouthpiece for wartime propaganda, also became the site where religious and political interests mixed. This politicization of religion, however, was Sayers’ intent. Within both the broadcasts and her accompanying notes there are numerous references to the rise of Nazism, Britain’s disastrous appeasement policy, and the contentious relationship between church and state. Although The Man Born to Be King is littered with references to the Second World War, I will limit my discussion to the main characters: Jesus, Pontius Pilate, and Caiaphas. With each of these characters, Sayers clearly communicates her faith in Christian dogma; but, more importantly, she expresses her dismay with current political leadership and presents a future democratic path for a Britain grounded in the Gospels.

For Sayers, the core focus of Britain’s rebranding needed to be nation-wide religious education; only those fortified in Christianity could, she believed, truly lead Britain in a successful war and post-war campaign. This education involved relearning Christ’s peaceful message, which she believed to be as misunderstood in the first century as it was in the twentieth. For Baruch the Zealot, an invented character who Sayers describes as the “pure politician,” Jesus is the leader for whom the political factions have been waiting. As Baruch states: “The party is ready, as you know. All we need is a figurehead, a leader, a spell-binder to fire the imagination of the masses and make them fall in to march behind the party.... Brains aren’t enough. You’ve got to appeal to the emotions—stir these peasants out of their slave mentality and give ’em something to fight and die for” (The Man 160). It is easy to see the correlation between Baruch’s rebellious party and the early formation of National Socialism. Sayers comments upon this similarity in her notes to the fifth play: “Baruch sees Jesus as the Nazi party may have seen Hitler—the Heaven-sent spell-binder, rather mad but a valuable political tool in the right hands” (The Man 154).²³ Like Baruch, the disciples also fail to understand that Jesus’ rebellion is spiritual rather than martial; only at the crucifixion do they begin to realize that Christ’s revolution will not lead to the physical overthrow of Rome. In one telling dialogue between Jesus and Andrew, the disciples’ lack of understanding is made blatantly apparent, with Andrew encapsulating what many thought Christ’s arrival would bring: “armies and banners, and a big procession” (The Man 105). Like Baruch, this was the military action the disciples expected (action that would have resonated with a British audience, who watched Nazi Germany march into Paris on 14 June 1940).

Throughout the notes and the broadcasts, Sayers consistently equates the political environment of the first century with the present, thereby ensuring that her audience never forgets to connect the message of the Gospels to their own lives. But by making such comparisons, Sayers also invokes the message and voice of Christ for military purposes. With The Man Born to Be King, Sayers broadcasted a peaceful Christian message to millions of Britons, who in the process also heard about Britain’s Christian duty to win the war. The clearest representation of the Second World War within the plays, however, emerges around the struggle for rule between Pontius Pilate and the Jewish Elder, Caiaphas. This analogy blurs the line between ally and enemy, and by the end of the twelfth broadcast, it still remains unclear as to whether a) Pilate represents Nazi Germany or the British Empire and b) Caiaphas represents the Chamberlain government or the Nazi-appointed clergy.

But Sayers also describes Caiaphas as an official who uses this peace to further his own political and religious career, thereby equating him to the Nazi-appointed clergy. Take, for example, his exclamation that “it is the duty of statesmen to destroy the madness which we call imagination. It is dangerous. It breeds dissension. Peace, order, security—that is Rome’s offer—at Rome’s price” (The Man 320). Sayers presents Caiaphas as wary of new religious interpretations, which Jesus represents, viewing them as a challenge to the religious order, and thus ultimately a challenge to the Imperial status quo. In her introduction to the plays, she describes Caiaphas as an “ecclesiastical politician” who is “appointed, like one of Hitler’s bishops, by a heathen government, expressly that he might collaborate with the New Order and see that the Church toed the line drawn by the State” (The Man 41) Although not directly compared to the Nazis, which would have been an even more troubling depiction of the Jewish leader, Caiaphas is shown to be sympathetic to Rome, which has allowed him to maintain his puppet-religious power. In this reading then, Rome again represents Nazi Germany. However, the fact that it is Caiaphas and his fellow Elders and not Pilate who want Jesus crucified, a representation that borders on anti-Semitism, complicates this allegorical version.

Notes

¹ See Wolfe (226). I would like to thank The Space Between readers and editor for their tremendously helpful and insightful feedback on this article. A version of this article has been published in Modernism at the Microphone: Radio, Propaganda, and Literary Aesthetics during World War II. London: Bloomsbury Academic: 2015.

² The LDOS advertisement also ran in The English Churchman on 18 Dec. 1941, the Church of England Newsletter on 19 Dec. 1941, and the Sunday Dispatch on 28 Dec. 1941. See Wolfe (588) and Briggs (567).

⁷ See also McLaine and Deer.

⁸ Although not focusing on sound, Mia Spiro disputes the Blitz’s “myth of equality” and shows that even authors who challenged the Nazis’ anti-Semitism, homophobia, and misogyny also included these features in their work.

¹² In Theater of the Mind, Neil Verma argues that radio drama should be understood as a “positive” medium, rather than one that “fabricates lack,” as it “evok[es] scenes through speech, reverb, filter, segue, and other devices directed at an imaginary allowing itself to be instructed” (9).

¹³ The Lord Chamberlain also asked that no audience be present at the broadcast, as this would blur the line between stage and radio where a voicing might become an impersonation.

¹⁸ “I AM” is a reference to John 8:58, where Jesus states: “In very truth I tell you, before Abraham was born, I am.” This is taken from “I AM that I am” which is the English translation of the answer God gave to Moses when Moses asked his name; see Exodus 3:14. Thus, by stating “I AM” Jesus declares his divinity, but this declaration is lost upon a listening audience (Oxford Study Bible).

¹⁹ Priestley and George Orwell also spoke of Britain’s rebirth, but in political terms. Priestley spoke about a “new world order” and a “new democracy” for Britain and her colonies post-war (Priestley 200). Orwell, who broadcasted for the BBC’s Indian Section, wrote of England’s democratic-socialist future in The Lion and the Unicorn.

²⁰ Sayers’ war work extended beyond literature. Before the war broke, she wrote for the War Office. She also worked with the MOI, was an air-raid warden, and published letters and articles about the war.

²¹ Sayers’ claims for Germany’s paganism at the expense of Christianity need to be questioned in light of recent historical studies. Although some Christian leaders were persecuted under Nazism, new historical evidence shows that Germany’s Protestant Church “actively supported the regime and fought for a Germanically sanitized version of Christianity that dispensed with the Old Testament on the grounds that is was ‘Jewish’, and rebranded Jesus Christ as a proto-nazi Nordic hero.” Paganism, it seems, was a less effective recruiting tool than the Protestant Church’s “Nazified Christianity” (Evans 6). See also Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke’s The Occult Roots of Nazism; Richard Steigmann-Gall’s The Holy Reich; Susannah Heschel’s The Aryan Jesus; and the special issue of the Journal of Contemporary History in which Evans’ introduction can be found.

²² Religion and morality were also central to Britain’s American propaganda: “They stressed that Britain fought for Christian civilisation against an enemy bent on restoring the heathen pantheon of Wagnerian fantasy” (Cull 163).

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