“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and the Power of the Christian Left
My previous article about Uncle Tom’s Cabin provided a general overview of the plot and my takeaways from the book. However, I deliberately left out two critical pieces: first, the Christian motifs that appear throughout the novel; and second, the story of Uncle Tom himself.
The Christian Left
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
The true nature and doctrines of Christianity, and the responsibility of Christians to follow those doctrines, form a prominent and powerful theme throughout Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the book’s author, portrays true Christians as those who believe in a universal obligation to treat all humans fairly and with dignity, since we are all God’s children. Additionally, Stowe says, Christians must strive toward the salvation of all — even our enemies. Today we might call this interpretation of Christianity the “Christian Left,” whose emphasis on universal benevolence contrasts with the fire-and-brimstone Christian Right.
Some thought leaders today are starting to espouse these views more often than was common just a few years ago. But more on that later.
Having established this “true” version of Christianity, Stowe regularly praises the characters who follow it. And she often builds sympathy for slave characters by emphasizing their Christian beliefs and practices.
Here are four noteworthy examples of characters practicing the inclusive, generous Christianity that Stowe promotes:
1. Senator and Mrs. Bird
This first example merits quoting at length, wherein Senator Bird and his wife (alluded to in my previous article) debate the Fugitive Slave Act (emphasis added):
“Is it true that they have been passing a law forbidding people to give meat and drink to those poor colored folks that come along? I heard they were talking of some such law, but I didn’t think any Christian legislature would pass it!”
“Why, Mary, you are getting to be a politician, all at once.”
“No, nonsense! I wouldn’t give a fig for all your politics, generally, but I think this is something downright cruel and unchristian. I hope, my dear, no such law has been passed.”
“There has been a law passed forbidding people to help off the slaves that come over from Kentucky, my dear.” …
“Now, John, I want to know if you think such a law as that is right and Christian? … I don’t know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow.” [cf. Matthew 25:35–40]
The Senator remains unconvinced until Eliza Harris, an escaped slave woman and one of the book’s main characters, turns up on his doorstep on a rainy night, young son in tow. Taking pity on them (and finally adopting his wife’s viewpoint), he helps the slaves, breaking the law that he has just helped bring into force.
2. The Quakers
In a second example of characters understanding the “true” meaning of Christianity, Stowe presents the Quakers. These hardy, honest people shelter and aid the same Eliza Harris just mentioned, along with her husband, as they flee their life of bondage — despite the fact that providing such help is not only dangerous but illegal. The Quakers are so dedicated to non-violence and universal charity that, after a confrontation with the slave-catchers, they even nurse one of them back to health after he is injured in a fall. As a result, the man renounces his prior profession and becomes a hunter instead.
3. Biblical distortions
Finally, Stowe emphasizes how the plain, obvious meaning of Christianity has been distorted for political ends. She argues that: a) for people to accept slavery, they need to be taught, since innate human decency is repelled by it; and b) all justifications of slavery that rely on the Bible are plain distortions.
In one dramatic scene, a white slaveholder helps Eliza scramble up an Ohio riverbank as she flees Kentucky. He reasons that he couldn’t bear not to help someone in such a desperate situation, and it’s not his job to catch and turn in other people’s slaves. Stowe then comments:
So spoke this poor, heathenish Kentuckian, who had not been instructed in his constitutional relations, and consequently was betrayed into acting in a sort of Christianized manner, which, if he had been better situated and more enlightened, he would not have been left to do.
In another scene, a clergyman on a ship transporting slaves engages in a back-and-forth with another passenger who questions his scriptural interpretation (emphasis added):
[Clergyman:] “It’s undoubtedly the intention of Providence that the African race should be servants, — kept in a low condition. … ‘Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be,’ the scripture says.” …
[Passenger:] “If ye’d only studied yer Bible, like this yer good man, ye might have know’d it before, and saved ye a heap o’ trouble. Ye could jist have said, ’Cussed be’ — what’s his name? — ‘and ’t would all have come right.’”
Here Stowe is obviously ridiculing the absurdity of picking a random verse out of the Bible that happens to mention “servants” and using that to justify the institution of African chattel slavery. Elsewhere, Stowe also criticizes the notion that slaves are better off with kind masters than being poor and free.
4. The Pure Child
Evangeline (“Eva”) St. Clare, a young girl in the book, regularly pleads with her parents to help the slaves — both those they own and others throughout the country — on the basis of their equality before God. She speaks to the slaves themselves in similar terms, telling a girl named Topsy:
“Poor Topsy!” said Eva, “don’t you know that Jesus loves all alike? He is just as willing to love you, as me. He loves you just as I do, — only more, because he is better. He will help you to be good; and you can go to Heaven at last, and be an angel forever, just as much as if you were white. Only think of it, Topsy! — you can be one of those spirits bright, Uncle Tom sings about.”
Following this speech, in not-so-subtle foreshadowing, one character explicitly describes Eva as “Christ-like,” an exemplar of universal love and kindness.
Stowe makes one other point regarding Christianity that is important to mention: its power to provide hope. Many of the slave characters have nothing to their name but the clothes on their backs and their faith in God and Jesus. In graphically portraying the desperate condition of these fellow Christians, Stowe nearly leaps from the page to yell: “HELP THEM! You can answer their prayers!” Framing abolitionism in these explicitly Christian terms proved to be a powerful message to her circa-1850 readership.
One character fully embraces this advice and finds complete peace through his Christian faith. He carries on through all pain and suffering in the knowledge that eternal life awaits him after death. And he happens to be the book’s title character.
Uncle Tom
After all of the discussion above, we still have hardly mentioned the eponymous Uncle Tom. Why so? Because in my view, Tom is actually a rather one-dimensional character. Stowe presents him as the archetype of an idealized, perfect Christian: dutiful and compassionate as well as completely accepting of his fate. The examples are numerous:
- When, at the beginning of the book, he has a chance to avoid being sold and torn from his home and family, he declines, since doing so would cause harm to befall the other slaves.
- When he is offered the chance to kill Simon Legree, his tyrannical master toward the end of the book, he declines and even prevents another slave from doing so.
And just before (spoiler alert) Legree murders him, Tom makes this remarkable speech, addressing the heartless man who takes sadistic pleasure in grinding his slaves into the dirt (emphasis added):
Tom looked up to his master, and answered, “Mas’r, if you was sick, or in trouble, or dying, and I could save ye, I’d give ye my heart’s blood; and, if taking every drop of blood in this poor old body would save your precious soul, I’d give ’em freely, as the Lord gave his for me. O, Mas’r! don’t bring this great sin on your soul! It will hurt you more than ’t will me! Do the worst you can, my troubles’ll be over soon; but, if ye don’t repent, yours won’t never end!”
These are not the words of an ordinary man, but of a religious figure — a saint and, inevitably, a martyr. Tom is a living example of how slavery perverts the natural moral order of the universe, giving unrepentant torturers unlimited power over even the most faithful servant, and most devout Christian.
Tom’s faith is so complete that he even chides other characters who empathize with his horrendous plight. See this conversation on his death bed:
[George Shelby:] “O, don’t die! It’ll kill me! — it’ll break my heart to think what you’ve suffered, — and lying in this old shed, here! Poor, poor fellow!”
“Don’t call me poor fellow!” said Tom, solemnly, “I have been poor fellow; but that’s all past and gone, now. I’m right in the door, going into glory! O, Mas’r George! Heaven has come! I’ve got the victory! — the Lord Jesus has given it to me! Glory be to His name!”
With this truly exceptional piety, Tom ends up more as a symbol of an unreachable ideal than a complex individual to whom the reader can relate.
So how did “Uncle Tom” become an epithet? Far from the groveling collaborator that the modern understanding of the term suggests, by the end of the book the real Tom has undergone enough suffering to become a combination of Jesus and Job. He is a role model and inspiration to the slaves around him, dutifully completing his back-breaking work by day and telling Bible stories by night. He does his duty to his master as he understands it, but he refuses to obey any order that would break his Christian code of ethics. More a Mother Teresa than a Spartacus, his aim is to provide comfort to the afflicted, not lead them in open revolt.
One more point: Tom and Africa
Stowe, as narrator, explicitly connects Tom’s painful travails, and that of all slaves, to the book’s Christian motif:
And this, oh Africa! latest called of nations, — called to the crown of thorns, the scourge, the bloody sweat, the cross of agony, — this is to be thy victory; by this shalt thou reign with Christ when his kingdom shall come on earth.
This theme is repeated in the epilogue in a letter from George Harris, writing from freedom in Canada:
And to [Africa], in my heart, I sometimes apply those splendid words of prophecy: “Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee; I will make thee an eternal excellence, a joy of many generations!”
In this view of Christian theology, torture, suffering, and agony are a privilege: just as Jesus suffered, the children of Africa now suffer, and through that suffering they will be granted eventual victory on earth and eternal life in the hereafter.
Final Thoughts
As we have seen, Christian themes are woven deeply into nearly all aspects of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, including the development of its title character. Stowe’s interpretation of Christianity, which I have called here the Christian Left, plays on the reader’s heartstrings by emphasizing the need for universal love, equality, compassion, and forgiveness.
These themes are not confined to the slavery debates of the 1850s, however. In reading them, I was struck by their continuing applicability today. Though since the 1980s the Christian Right has grown in prominence, today we are seeing somewhat of a resurgence of the Christian Left, and not only from left-leaning politicians.
Yes, there is Pete Buttigieg, a Democrat who has shared multiple times how his faith has informed his political views on refugees and aid to the poor, among other topics. But there is also Andrew Sullivan, David French, and Arthur Brooks (whose latest book is entitled Love Your Enemies). The latter two of these folks were considered very conservative before the rise of Trump scrambled the political spectrum.
My point is this: Don’t underestimate the power of these ideals of inclusiveness and charity that comprise the Christian Left. If they were powerful enough to fundamentally reshape America in the era of my great-grandfather’s great-grandfather, they could do the same today. You never know.
