Uncle Tom's Cabin: Christianity Supported Slavery

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Since the 17th century when African slaves were brought over by Dutch slavers, Christianity has been used to justify the act of enslavment. Missionaries sailed with slavers and tried to convert the Africans sold into slavery many times. During the 19th century Christianity was a great factor in helping institutionalize and even justify the suffering of the slaves. Slaves were made to believe through verses of the Bible that if they suffered in their current lives, they would have a better existence after they passed on. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, puts forth the lives of many different slaves and their masters in a way that was one of the contributing factors to igniting the civil war. The book focuses on the tension between the morality of religion and how religion was used to institutionalize slavery, particularly for the main character, Tom. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin presents the interpretative tension between religion and how it was used by the white slaveholders to rationalize Tom’s bondage and servitude for him and themselves.

The white institution of Christianity has been forced upon Tom since childhood to make him believe in the Puritanical tenet that individual suffering in life, guarantees a good tidings in death. Tom has been taught to read the Bible and believes that God will be with him everywhere he goes, even after he has been sold and separated from Aunt Chloe and the rest of his family. “I’m in the Lord’s hands,” said Tom; “nothin’ can go no furder than he lets it;--and thar’s one thing I can thank him for. It’s me that’s sold and going down, and you nur the chil’en. Here you’re safe; ---what comes will come only on me; and the Lord, he’ll help me,--I know he will,” (Stowe 81)...

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... is invoking language of the Christ’s crucifixion on the cross by the Romans. Stowe makes an analogous statement to this in describing the daily plight of black slaves. Most whites view the system of slavery as natural; they see black as inferior to them and therefore designed to serve them based on the color of their skin. Blacks however see bondage through the forced biblical paradigm that has been imposed upon them. Stowe makes the analogy that African Americans suffer daily in bondage like Christ suffered on the cross.

Overall Uncle Tom’s Cabin is filled with religious overtones of martyrdom, imposed religion, and genuine piety of the slaves in bondage. Harriet Beecher Stowe shows the divide between how the slaveholders see religion as a whip to keep slaves in line and how slaves see the same religion as a balm for the wounds inflicted on them by the whites.

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