In my first graduate school text book, A First Look a Communication Theory, seventh edition, By Em Griffin, the author makes the following quote at the beginning of the first chapter:
This is a book about theories — communication theories. After that statement you may already be stifling a yawn. Many college students, after all, regard theory as obscure, dull and irrelevant (p 2).
I read that sentence and thought The Dogma is the Drama. More on my reaction later.
Naturally, as a textbook, teaching about theories, the author felt the need to define theory. In trying to define what a theory is, he quotes Judee Burgoon, who gave the working definition of a “set of systematic informed hunches about the way things work (p 3).”
He also offered three visualizations, or metaphors, to help us understand what a theory does:
1) Nets cast to catch “the world”
2) Lenses to focus attention on a particular feature
3) Maps of the territory to explore (p 5-6).
And since we are studying theories of communication, he offered us a working definition of communication:
Communication is the relational process of creating and interpreting messages that elicit a response (p 6).
There, set out in stark statements is the core of the first part of the first chapter. Stay with me. I stated all of that to get to make my point, which comes from the “Questions to Sharpen You Focus” section at the end of the chapter. Here there are four questions, the second of which is:
2) Which metaphor offered to capture the meaning of theory do you find most helpful — a theory as a net, a lens or a map? Can you think of another image that you could use to explain to a friend what this course is about?
I read this question to Betsy, and her answer, like my first impulse was “it depends on what I am describing.” Different metaphors for different contexts. But when pushed to decide it wasn’t hard for me to say the map. It seemed the most personal.
And I had no trouble thinking of another image to explain this course: The story — the narrative that threads all the seemingly unconnected details, sometimes with unexpected twists and turns and surprise endings.
Which loops me back to my original teaser: The Dogma is the Drama.
In response to a line similar to the one complaining about the boredom of theories, Dorothy L. Sayers, 20th century British novelist and apologist, wrote one of her most famous apologetic essays “The Dogma is the Drama.”
“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…. This is the dogma we find so dull — this terrifying drama which God is the victim and the hero. If this is dull, then what, in Heaven’s name, is worthy to be called exciting? The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused Him of being a bore — on the contrary; they thought Him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround Him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certifying Him ‘meek and mild,’ and recommended Him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.”
I know, I know, a long logical leap from one to the other. But if you are reading this line you followed, and took the leap with me. Thank you for coming along.
At The Rainbow 
I knew Em Griffin at the University of Michigan and he went on to teach at Wheaton College. (After Mom graduated).
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He mentions his teaching at Wheaton College in chapter 2.
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