This is the first collection to investigate Charles Dickens on his vast and various opinions about the uses and abuses of the tenets of Christian faith that imbue English Victorian culture. Although previous studies have looked at his well-known antipathies toward Dissenters, Evangelicals, Catholics, and Jews, they have also disagreed about Dickens’ thoughts on Unitarianism and speculated on doctrines of Protestantism that he endorsed or rejected. Besides addressing his depiction of these religious groups, the volume’s contributors locate gaps in scholarship and unresolved illations about poverty and charity, representations of children, graveyards, labor, scientific controversy, and other social issues through an investigation of Dickens’ theological concerns. In addition, given that Dickens’ texts continue to influence every generation around the globe, a timely inclusion in the collection is a consideration of the neo-Victorian multi-media representations of Dickens’ work and his ideas on theological questions pitched to a postmodern society.

Charles Dickens's 200th birthday will be celebrated in 2012. Though his writings are now more than 100 years old, many remain in print and are avidly read and studied. Often overlooked--or unknown--are the considerable Christian convictions Dickens held and displayed in his work. This book fills that vacuum by examining Dickens the Christian and showing how Christian beliefs and practices permeate his work. This historical work is written for pastors, students, and laity alike. Chapters look at Dickens's life and work topically, arguing that Christian faith was front and center in some of what Dickens wrote (such as his children's work The Life of Our Lord) and saliently implicit throughout various other characters and plots. Since Dickens's Christian side is rarely considered, Gary Colledge illuminates a fresh angle of Dickens, and the 200th birthday makes it especially timely.

At a time when biblical authority was under challenge from the Higher Criticism and evolutionary science, ‘what providence meant’ was the most keenly contested of questions. This book takes up the controversial subject of Dickens and religion, and offers a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary area of religion and literature. In a close study of major novels, it argues that networks of biblical allusion reveal the Judeo-Christian grand narrative as key to his development as a writer, and as the ontological ground on which he stands to appeal to ‘the conscience of a Christian people’. Engaging the biblical narrative in dialogue with other contemporary narratives that concern themselves with origins, destinations, and hermeneutic decipherments, the inimitable Dickens affirms the Bible’s still-active role in popular culture. The providential thinking of two twentieth-century theorists, Bakhtin and Ricoeur, sheds light on an exploration of Dickens’s narrative theology.

While Dickens's religion and religious thought is recognized as a significant component of his work, no study of Dickens's religion has carefully considered his often ignored, yet crucially relevant, The Life of Our Lord. Written by a biblical studies scholar, this study brings the insights of a theological approach to bear on The Life of Our Lord and on Dickens's other writing. Colledge argues that Dickens intended The Life Of Our Lord as a serious and deliberate expression of his religious thought and his understanding of Christianity based on evidences for his reasons for writing, what he reveals, and the unique genre in which he writes. Using The Life of Our Lord as a definitive source for our understanding of Dickens's Christian worldview, the book explores Dickens's Christian voice in his fiction, journalism, and letters. As it seeks to situate him in the context of nineteenth-century popular religion-including his interest in Unitarianism-this study presents fresh insight into his churchmanship and reminds us, as Orwell observed, that Dickens "was always preaching a sermon".

Charles Dickens had a close relationship with the doctrines of Christianity. This text is an introduction to the scriptural significance of his works, it takes excerpts from a range of his writings and directly links them to passages from the Bible.

This book is a Christian devotional that uses Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol as a tool to teach the ancient Advent lessons of Hope, Faith, Peace, Love and Joy. Each week's devotion begins with a section from A Christmas Carol which dramatizes the Advent Lesson and is followed with a scriptural Advent lesson from the Church of England's Book of Prayer-- back cover.

Charles Dickens's other Christmas classic, with a new introduction by Dickens's great-great-grandson, Gerald Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens wrote The Life of Our Lord during the years 1846-1849, just about the time he was completing David Copperfield. In this charming, simple retelling of the life of Jesus Christ, adapted from the Gospel of St. Luke, Dickens hoped to teach his young children about religion and faith. Since he wrote it exclusively for his children, Dickens refused to allow publication. For eighty-five years the manuscript was guarded as a precious family secret, and it was handed down from one relative to the next. When Dickens died in 1870, it was left to his sister-in-law, Georgina Hogarth. From there it fell to Dickens's son, Sir Henry Fielding Dickens, with the admonition that it should not be published while any child of Dickens lived. Just before the 1933 holidays, Sir Henry, then the only living child of Dickens, died, leaving his father's manuscript to his wife and children. He also bequeathed to them the right to make the decision to publish The Life of Our Lord. By majority vote, Sir Henry's widow and children decided to publish the book in London. In 1934, Simon & Schuster published the first American edition, which became one of the year's biggest bestsellers.