Dear Editor,
Thank you for the book review by Ann Benton if Charles (February en) asking Dickens can be regarded as a Christian? I notice that Ann did not commit herself to the book’s thesis. But let me add a few things.
Charles Dickens developed a dislike for the church in his youth and had all the prejudices of his time. He had, for instance, that dislike of defined dogmas, which really means a preference for unexamined dogmas. Stephen Rost notes that Dickens became involved with a system that attracted many fellow intellectuals: Unitarianism. It enabled him to live without the dogmatic creeds of historic Christianity, yet affirm the existence of God and the humanity and divine mission of Jesus Christ.1
In 1834, for example, Sir Andrew Agnew attempted to pass a bill prohibiting recreation and work on Sunday. This infuriated Dickens. In a pamphlet titled, Sunday Under Three Heads, he defended the people’s right to pleasure, opposing a plan to prohibit games on Sundays2. This was published under the pseudonym, Timothy Sparks in 1836.
The BBC 4 programme, British Liberalism: The Grand Tour, ‘John Stuart Mills, John Bright and the Morant Bay Massacre’ (Thursday 10 December 2015)3, backs up what the Economist said about Dickens unbiblical attitudes, by exposing his part in defending the death of c. 400 Jamaicans by the Governor Edward Eyre which erupted on 11 October 18654. Governor Eyre’s reprisal of hangings, flogging and house-burnings was so appalling that it caused shockwaves in London. These people were ‘standing up for their rights’ and were brutally suppressed by the police. That Dickens supported the suppression is distasteful5. Dickens in his works railed against the ‘ignorant, sordid, brutal men’ who ran schools like Dotheboys Halls in Nicholas Nickleby, where orphans were flogged and starved, bit his tongue when it came to the inhuman conditions on Britain’s sugar plantations.6
Yours sincerely,
