# We could do with more Christian leaders like the Rev Charles Dodgson **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 24, 2005, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-could-do-with-more-christian-leaders-like-the-rev-charles-dodgson/318379 "2005-08-24T03:04:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![roger\_thornhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@roger\_thornhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roger_thornhill)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2005, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-could-do-with-more-christian-leaders-like-the-rev-charles-dodgson/318379/1 "2005-08-24T03:04:09Z")
Who was of course better known as Lewis Carroll. Many years ago I remember being particularly struck by his words in a new (at the time) edition of _Alice_. Timeless at heart: > [@Carroll](#): > > Are these strange words from a writer of such tales as “Alice”? And is this a strange letter to find in a book of nonsense? It may be so. Some perhaps may blame me for thus mixing together things grave and gay; others may smile and think it odd that any one should speak of solemn things at all, except in Church and on a Sunday…I do not believe God means us thus to divide life into two halves–to wear a grave face on Sunday, and to think it out-of-place to even so much as to mention Him on a week-day. From [An Easter Greeting to Every Child Who Loves “Alice”](http://home.earthlink.net/~lfdean/carroll/nursery/easter.html) ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2005, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-could-do-with-more-christian-leaders-like-the-rev-charles-dodgson/318379/2 "2005-08-24T05:09:12Z")
Sadly, he’d probably be derided as a pedophile and not worth listening to these days… ---
**Author:** ![roger\_thornhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@roger\_thornhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roger_thornhill)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2005, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-could-do-with-more-christian-leaders-like-the-rev-charles-dodgson/318379/3 "2005-08-24T08:04:37Z")
What is the straight dope on his “paedophilia”? I’ve always dismissed it for lack of evidence and the tendency to import our prepackaged and often superficial modern judgements and “values” into our times and places without attempting to understand them. ---
**Author:** ![roger\_thornhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@roger\_thornhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roger_thornhill)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2005, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-could-do-with-more-christian-leaders-like-the-rev-charles-dodgson/318379/4 "2005-08-24T08:07:05Z")
…‘other times’… ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2005, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-could-do-with-more-christian-leaders-like-the-rev-charles-dodgson/318379/5 "2005-08-24T09:15:59Z")
> [@roger thornhill](#): > > What is the straight dope on his “paedophilia”? I think that your intuition is correct. [Cecil is noncommital but a little suspicious](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_185.html). I’ve seen that piccy of Ms. Hatch. I don’t think it’s meant to be erotic. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2005, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-could-do-with-more-christian-leaders-like-the-rev-charles-dodgson/318379/6 "2005-08-24T13:57:21Z")
> [@roger thornhill](#): > > What is the straight dope on his “paedophilia”? I’ve always dismissed it for lack of evidence and the tendency to import our prepackaged and often superficial modern judgements and “values” into our times and places without attempting to understand them. Yes. Especially in the past, where you were supposed to be reticent where it comes to sex. A person of Dodgson’s era would not automatically think about sexual consummation if he saw something he thought was erotic. So even if he was turned on by young girls, there’s a good chance he never acted on the urges. A similar case was Benjamin Britten, who was gay and very attracted to boys in his early teens. There are many attested cases of him being especially friendly to boys that age (IIRC, some included sharing beds), but none of the boys has ever suggested he ever touched them sexually, and most – even those who knew about homosexuality at the time they knew him – specificially denied he did anything to them. ---
**Author:** ![roger\_thornhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@roger\_thornhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roger_thornhill)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2005, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-could-do-with-more-christian-leaders-like-the-rev-charles-dodgson/318379/7 "2005-08-25T02:59:51Z")
**Larry** and **RC** , thanks for that. Sexuality is such a deep and largely hidden thing that the tendency is to assume it’s dark as well. ---
**Author:** ![jackelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@jackelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackelope)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2005, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-could-do-with-more-christian-leaders-like-the-rev-charles-dodgson/318379/8 "2005-08-25T03:08:12Z")
Being a little unsure about the intent of the photos myself, I’m not going to post a link here, but I did a Google image search for _Evelyn Hatch_ and found the photo. It doesn’t look particularly erotic to me, but it doesn’t look particularly innocent, either. Hard to say, I guess.