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Was Charles Dickens a Christian?
Someone asked me this question, and even
from the outset I was reluctant to pursue it. In an earlier essay I questioned
the religious beliefs of Albert Einstein, because he deliberately used words common
to the Christian faith, but with an entirely different and very misleading
meaning. Dickens, on the other hand, used words familiar to Christians, usually
spoken by the characters in his books, with a Biblical meaning – mainly because
his world was coloured by the common Church of England. With Einstein, I am
sure his use of ‘Christian’ words may have misled many Christians into
believing he was a believer, so an essay was needed, to sort out the problem,
but with Dickens I cannot see any pressing need to define his religious
convictions, because he did not try to deliberately mislead people.
The question itself, regarding Dickens,
could also be construed as an insult – to anyone familiar with the man, and I
would like to say that I am not in any way trying to fit this great author into
some narrow, dogmatic pigeon-hole. To ask is to imply, and I am not trying to
imply. I am really not interested in whether Dickens was a Christian, an
Atheist or any other persuasion – for two reasons. The first is that a writer’s
personal opinions or faith may be completely separate from his or her writings,
so it is pointless to seek his faith in his books, and secondly, it is none of
my business.
But having come this far, the essay might as
well proceed.
How
do we decide whether someone is or is not a Christian? There are two ways:
first, the confession. To be a Christian one must acknowledge that Jesus
is one’s Lord and Saviour. It is a verbal confession, made with sincerity, from
the heart. It is not a once-only statement, but a conviction expressed in many
ways, consistently over time. Normally, a Christian will want other people to
also own Jesus as Lord and Saviour, so witnessing, or sharing the gospel with
others is usually part of the confession.
The second way is by lifestyle. A
Christian should be seen to be righteous – that is, morally upright, eschewing
evil, embracing good. In simple terms, a Christian
does not cheat, lie, steal, swear, blaspheme, take drugs, indulge in
pornography, or indeed chase after any obviously sick or violent media, and so
on. The list is quite extensive, and there always has to be a certain tempering
against the prevailing background cultural norms. (For example, in some
countries Christians see smoking as quite acceptable, while in others it is
clearly inappropriate) But the general conclusion is that a Christian is, in
works at least, a “good” person, reliable, hospitable, patient, kind, and
generous, a person you can trust, a person who will always try to do the right
thing.
With these things in mind, a brief summary
of Dickens’ life (based on biographies) reveals almost no sign of a desire to
share the gospel with anyone, and a great deal of secular or worldliness. Being
‘secular’ of course is not a criticism, as almost all of life can be called
‘secular’. He was, as far as his biographies go, a ‘man of the world’, yet he
was guided by his conscience, as most people are, and he cared a great deal
about the underprivileged, slaves, orphans and the poor – all very worthy and
‘Christian’ concerns. Needless to say, an atheist may care for these things as
sincerely as any Christian – though in practice it is rather rare to see any
atheist organization which rivals the equivalent Christian-based work.
Perhaps we need to approach the question
from another angle? “If Dickens was accused of being a Christian, and taken to
court for a trial of his faith, would there be enough evidence to convict him?”
I think this is a perfectly good question, because it expands on the words of
Jesus, “By their fruits you shall know them.” (Mat.7:20) Is there sufficient
“fruit” in Dickens’ life to convict him of being a born-again, Spirit-filled
Christian?
There are two ways in which a person may be
examined on this charge: their inner beliefs, and their external lifestyle. The
two go together and are usually inseparable, unless one is a consummate actor.
The temptation is to ignore the whole of a person’s life, and narrow the trial
down to just a handful of selected incidents, and base our conclusions on them
– as in the adultery of King David with Bathsheba and various other ungodly
acts of his, but a good judge would demand a fair trial, so the witness for the
defense would need to cover a wide range of events,
and present an overall picture. David did far more good and obedient things
than bad, and his heart was tender towards God. Christians never live perfect
lives. All slip up and have inherent faults. Dickens was no exception. If he
was a Christian we would expect to find some blemishes in his life, so the defense rests on both the positive and the negative
evidence. David, when he sinned, was a broken man (Psalm 51) and like Peter, he
wept with sorrow over his sins. How people react to sin is also important.
A lawyer for Dickens’ defense
might argue that all the stories Dickens wrote were moralistic. This surely is
evidence that he was a Christian? – see, the lawyer might say, the Biblical
standards of right and wrong being worked out in the lives of the characters,
the triumph of good over evil, the death or capture of the bad and the
vindication of the good. See the way Dickens shows sympathy for the villains,
and brings lawful arrest to the crafty and dishonest; see how the tables are
turned on those who plan wickedness. Divine justice is being done, as it always
is – surely Dickens was a Christian because he understood that ‘there is a God
in heaven who oversees the affairs of men?’ Even as we posit the question we
know that the answer must be in the negative. Any writer, of any or no
religious persuasion may write moralistic stories, and the fact that good
triumphs over evil is no proof that the writer really believes in some Eternal
Being who has imposed this rule on the universe.
Dickens did write several small ‘Christmas’
books, but they were more an experiment, an area in which he could use his
imagination to delve into various seasonal themes, than an attempt to promote
the Biblical story of Jesus the son of God, born King and Lamb, for the
salvation and redemption of the world.
Attitudes to Biblical
doctrine.
Another area, in which we might legitimately
investigate the religious beliefs of Dickens, is to look at his attitudes to
Biblical doctrine. The Bible makes it very clear that what a person
believes is the basis on which God will judge him or her. Romans 10:9 “If you shall confess with your mouth
the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in your heart that God has raised him from
the dead, you shall be saved.” If Dickens held an alternative view to the plain
teachings of Scripture, then perhaps we might have a body of evidence on which
to make some sort of evaluation? For example, what did Dickens believe about
death? Was he a believer in reincarnation – endless circles of never-ending
life, in which a disembodied spirit returns to endless new lives
lived inside the bodies of other persons, or a succession of animals? Or did
Dickens believe that life was all there was, and death was eternal extinction?
1. The afterlife.
When his 17 year old sister-in-law Mary Hogarth died, Dickens was heart-broken. Fred Kaplan,
‘Dickens A Biography’ writes, “Charles responded to her death with controlled
hysteria, the immense pain destroying his usual equilibrium. . . he wrote
nothing for the rest of the month (3 weeks) . . . Mary’s death seemed a
desertion so devastating that he kept her memory alive with conscious memorials
and in recurrent dreams . . . . he could control both
the pain of desertion and the fear of mortality by insisting, in an ever-rising
rhetoric of transcendental affirmation, that “she is sentient and conscious of
my emotions somewhere.” The faultless Mary . . . was “far above the
foibles and vanity of her sex and age . . . is now in Heaven.” There is, he
insisted, “the certainty of a bright and happy world beyond the Grave, which
such young and untried creatures (half Angels here) must be called away by God
to people.” (‘to people’ = ‘to populate’) Though he attended Sunday services
regularly, he had no real commitment to the Anglican faith. But he found it
impossible not to seek the emotional satisfaction of a general Christian belief
in a personal afterlife. For years he had the same dream of Mary visiting him,
whose “perpetual repetition is extraordinary.” In the fiction he wrote during
this period, he anticipated the emotional ramifications of her death in the
depiction of the death of Oliver’s mother and he dramatized these feelings in
the death and ascension of Little Nell. Thereafter, though the force of what
she had been to him remained strong, the rhetoric of heaven weakened and almost
disappeared from his fiction.”
2. Religion.
Dickens was brought up in a nominally
Anglican household. His view of the church was one of stale, boring custom, and
at worst repressive fanaticism. What he wanted was a religion which rose above
traditional church, a religion based on the best will of the heart, which was
not bound to sectarian dogmatism. He was used to the Anglican services, and
sometimes he found enough good in them to admire them. Good Anglicans, he
thought, set a high moral and religious example, and represented Jesus in a
good way. “His novels resonate with phrases from the Bible and the Book of
Common Prayer, whose ritual affirmations of eternal life moved him deeply. At
the same time he was aggressively anticlerical, antidogmatic,
and antisectarian. While not a rationalist, he wanted
a reasonable religion that would not try common sense with excessive emphasis,
let alone reliance, on miracles like the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and
transubstantiation. In the context of liberal Protestantism, he desired Jesus
to be understood as an ordinary human being rather than as the Son of God.
Searching for a community in which to express such views, in the winter of
1842-43 he had become a member of Tagart’s Unitarian
congregation.” (Fred Kaplan, ‘Dickens, A
Biography’) More on
Unitarians later.
When Dickens saw the now famous painting by
John Everett Millais, which depicted Jesus as an
ordinary boy in a commonplace carpenter’s shop, he denounced it as indecent,
even blasphemous. He thought that Jesus was misrepresented, because the
painting, by its use of symbols and placement of objects, tried to elevate
Jesus from being just a common carpenter’s helper, to God in the carpenter’s shop.
In 1853 Dickens said “
3.
Superstitions.
Every person has certain mannerisms or
habits which are peculiar to themselves. Sometimes these individual facets of
behaviour are labeled ‘faults’, or ‘antisocial’ by
other people, and sometimes not. It all depends on what the community finds
acceptable. For example, a person who likes physical contact, such as hugs and
kisses, may be warmly received by people who like to be hugged and kissed,
while in some circles such behaviour might be considered invasive and unpleasant.
Again, someone with a fiery temper may be admired by some, and hated by others.
If one examines one’s own life, one will surely find some character traits
which are either acceptable or unacceptable to others – and the same can be
said for Dickens.
We
approach this aspect of the man with great caution. Measured against his
genius, his background, the culture in which he lived and the quality of
scientific enlightenment, his superstitions may have been considered reasonably
normal. I leave it to the Reader to decide.
·
He had a nervous terror of fire. He insured
everything with the Sun Fire Office.
·
He loved elegance and he loved light, hence his habit
of installing mirrors in whichever house he occupied. It may also be that he
liked seeing himself in the mirrors – it was well-known that he was vain.
·
He had a preoccupation wit combing his hair. Even at
dinner parties he would pull out a comb, if he thought his hair was ruffled,
and apply it – maybe a hundred times a day.
·
He always arranged and rearranged furniture until it
was placed in exactly the order and position he wanted. This compulsion was so
strong he could not work until every chair, table and whatever was precisely in
the position he required.
·
He always turned his bed to face north-south. As he
said to a friend “he maintained that he could not sleep with it in any other
position; and he backed up his objections by arguments about earth currents and
positive and negative electricity. It may have been a mere fantasy but it was
real enough to him . . . nervous and arbitrary, he was of the kind to whom
whims are laws, and self-control in contrary circumstances was simply an impossibility.”
·
He had an obsession about touching certain objects
three times for luck.
·
Friday was his “lucky” day.
·
He always left
·
He was fascinated by the powers of ‘mesmerism’, or
hypnotism and its twin phenomenon clairvoyance. There were many occasions when
he personally believed that a certain “magnetized” subject had been gifted with
second sight.
·
He is known to have attended at least one séance.
·
With family and friends he practiced the occult art
of table-spinning.
·
He was fascinated by ghosts. “I have always had a
strong interest in the subject, and never knowingly lose an opportunity of
pursuing it.” A friend of his remarked, “such was his interest generally in
things supernatural, that, but for the strong restraining power of his common
sense, he might have fallen into the follies of spiritualism.”
·
He was fascinated by his own dreams and by the
visions which appeared in them, of, for example, Mary Hogarth,
and also dreams in which there was pre-cognition (the foretelling of future
events.)
·
He had difficulty in telling the difference between
his dreams and reality (‘Dickens’, by Peter Ackroyd,
page 360) “There are many occasions when Dickens points to “the land of
shadows” as the origin of his fiction and when he even describes his serial
fiction as “my month’s dream”. There are also times when that dream casts a
veil over the actual world, when he could say of his fiction-“
. . .to believe it the only reality in life, and to mistake all the
realities for short-lived shadows.” Thus the real world sometimes becomes for
him a place of memory and shadow only; “I think what a dream we live in, until
it seems for a moment the saddest dream that ever was dreamed.” And in remarks such as this, where it is
clear that the world of his fiction has become utterly confused with the world
of his waking life, we see how it was that the sadness of his own novels is
turned into the nature of the world itself; and how sometimes Dickens is
sometimes to be found wandering desolately inside one of his own fictions.”
Dickens wrote many stories, but in all his
characters which come closest to being what we might call ‘Christian’ there is
no doctrinal statement, such as we would expect from a Bible-based believer.
But this alone is not proof one way or the other. Shakespeare also avoided
making doctrinal statements in his plays, and in the context of a work of
fiction it would be inappropriate. The audience would not like it anyway.
Dickens usually portrayed churches as dusty places, or pretentious facades,
full of empty rituals and forms. He usually mentions ministers only in parody,
or to criticize them – yet people find huge amounts of ‘Christian’ sentiment in
his books. There is a clear consistency in all this. On the one hand he was
repelled by the institution of ‘Church’ and its representatives, but on the
other hand he strongly believed in the principles or ethics behind
Christianity. (As many people have recognized, the teachings of all the major
religions share many things in common – generosity, hospitality, love,
forgiveness, meekness, etc)
But while Dickens rejected the ‘Church’ as an institution, he had his own vision of the world which he
fastened to an accepted universal creed, so the Christian faith was, for him, a
brighter version of the good sentiments he believed in. You can find these
sentiments in the Christmas Books (of which he wrote many). He did not draw on
the Bible for his authority, but rather looked within himself and found all the
ethics he needed inside himself – his natural sense of justice and goodness as
guided by his conscience. (This inner goodness within Man was put there by God,
because Man is made in the image of God, and has implanted within him the law,
written on his heart. Rom.2:14,15 This is why, for
example, Buddha could teach men to show hospitality, and Jesus could tell
people to ‘turn the other cheek’ rather than take revenge. Neither of these
teachers invented anything new – they simply put into words universal truths
which were in all hearts from creation)
Unitarian
beliefs.
Leonard
Mason, a Unitarian Universalist minister wrote:
Come, return
to your place in the pews,
And hear our
heretical views;
You were not
born in sin so lift up your chin,
You have
only your dogmas to lose.”
The UUA traces its roots to the radical wing
of the Reformation, which considered itself the true heirs of New Testament
Christianity. (Earl Morse Wilbur, ‘History of Unitarianism’, 2 vols. Boston:
Beacon Press, 1945) Though never viewed as orthodox by its orthodox foes, it
has always considered itself ‘Christian’.
John Biddle (1615-1662) is called the father
of English Unitarianism. (About 200 years before Dickens was born) He used the
Bible, in much the same way as Jehovah’s Witnesses and others do, to disprove
the Trinity. He also gave bodily parts to God, restricted Him to a specific
place where He was confined, and taught that God did not know everything.
Despite their claims to be based on the
Bible, the Unitarian position, from its inception, has been to shift the
authority of the Bible out of the way, and replace it with one’s own personal
tastes and needs – a tailor-made religion which suits one’s self. This of
course set the stage for a pluralistic view of all religions – a global
approach to faith, a blend of religions into one general faith system. The
activities of John Haynes Holmes, a prominent Unitarian of New York illustrate
this clearly. One year after the Armistice (1919) he reconstituted the
‘Unitarian Church of the Messiah’ as the ‘Community Church of new York’,
proclaimed Ghandi the greatest man in the world, and assimilated the festivals
of the world’s religions into the church’s liturgical year.
Half the signers of the ‘Humanist Manifesto
I’ were Unitarian Universalist ministers, as were the first four presidents of
the American Humanist Association, the AHA’s first
executive director and the journal’s first editor. Humanists affirm the theory
of evolution and give science and reason the place of supremacy, and they look
for ethical values from human sources, rather than divine.
One could follow the twisting trails of
Unitarians and Humanists for a long time, but the pattern is clear – once
people abandon the clear teachings of Scripture, they progressively sink deeper
and deeper into error. Unitarians today believe in many popular New Age
teachings – very little remains excluded, provided it is not the solid and
dogmatic statements of the Bible.
Conclusion.
There may be a lot more material pertinent
to Dickens and his position regarding true Christianity which I have not found,
and I apologize in advance if this essay seems too thin, but as far as my
research goes, I think he probably was not a committed Christian in the
Biblical sense. This is not to say that he was not a very kind and generous
man, with many fine qualities, and I’m sure he put to shame many people who
professed to actually be Christians. I have tried to be objective, and deal
with whatever the biographers have provided, and I have weighed what I
discovered against what the Bible says. As always, the Bible is my solid base
from which I always begin and I make no apology for that.
Perhaps in this essay there is a warning to
all of us – to be very careful to avoid falling into the trap of thinking our
moral standards are in themselves altogether sufficient and pleasing to God,
and that our definition of salvation is the same as God’s. It is, in the end, far
better to be a ‘saved’ person than a ‘good’ person. Our only hope is to obey
the Bible, and fall on our knees before the cross, on which Jesus died. He is
our only chance at forgiveness, and only through him can any person truly
become a Christian.
References:
Dickens,
by Peter Ackroyd. Published by Sinclair-Stevenson Limited.1990.
Charles
Dickens and his world, by J.B.Priestley. Published by
Dickens
a biography, by Fred Kaplan. Published
by Hodder and
The
Kingdom of the Cults, by Walter Martin. Published by Bethany House. 1997.