In 1943 William Temple offered the honorary Lambeth Doctorate of Divinity to the novelist, writer and playwright Dorothy L. Sayers; an offer that after some lengthy consideration she refused. This article considers the reasons for her refusal, and situtates them in the context of the wider relationship between the Church of England and the 'Christian writer' in the period. This is the introduction to an edition of the correspondence between the two; the letters themselves are not included for reasons of copyright.