Uncle Tom's Cabin

by

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Christianity and Christian Charity Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Slavery and Race Theme Icon
Christianity and Christian Charity Theme Icon
Women Theme Icon
Home Theme Icon
Freedom Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Uncle Tom's Cabin, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Christianity and Christian Charity Theme Icon

Uncle Tom's Cabin repeatedly references the Bible, especially the New Testament. The dominant morality of the United States is, according to Beecher Stowe, a Christian one, and slavery is utterly incompatible with it. Uncle Tom owns only one book—the Bible—and is often found reading it, slowly and with great religious feeling. He quotes the Bible to educate Eva, Cassy, and others, and to find the strength to survive his own trials. The Quakers who help George, Eliza, and Harry escape—and who take in Tom Loker despite his aggression toward them—justify their actions not as generosity to black people but as a duty to God and man, demanded of them by the Bible. Miss Ophelia embodies a colder, more distant “Northern” Christianity, which values the lives of slaves but is unwilling to help them personally. But as the novel continues, it becomes clear that the Golden Rule is the paramount Christian law: humans ought to treat one another as they themselves wish to be treated.

Uncle Tom serves as a Christ-figure or martyr in the novel. Tom dies protecting Cassy and Emmeline and will not whip his fellow slaves; he suffers so that others might live. Eva demonstrates a kind of saintliness: she behaves in strict accordance with Jesus' teachings, and her death is an example to her father, causing him to regain his faith (however briefly before he is killed). Ultimately, Beecher Stowe argues through the novel that a more truly Christian system of values in the United States would eradicate slavery altogether and render Uncle Tom's and Eva’s sacrifices unnecessary.

Related Themes from Other Texts
Compare and contrast themes from other texts to this theme…
Get the entire Uncle Tom's Cabin LitChart as a printable PDF.
Uncle Tom's Cabin PDF

Christianity and Christian Charity Quotes in Uncle Tom's Cabin

Below you will find the important quotes in Uncle Tom's Cabin related to the theme of Christianity and Christian Charity.
Chapter 3 Quotes

I an’t a Christian like you, Eliza; my heart’s full of bitterness; I can’t trust in God. Why does he let things be so?

Related Characters: George Harris (speaker), Eliza Harris
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

Uncle Tom was a sort of patriarch in religious matters . . . . Having, naturally, an organization in which the morale was strongly predominant, together with a greater breadth and cultivation of mind than obtained among his companions . . . .

Related Symbols: The Bible
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

This is God’s curse on slavery!—a bitter, bitter, most accursed thing!—a curse to the master and a curse to the slave! I was a fool to think I could make anything good out of such a deadly evil.

Related Characters: Mrs. Shelby (speaker)
Page Number: 38
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

Besides, I don’t see no kind of ‘casion for me to be hunter and catcher for other folks, neither.

Related Characters: Mr. Symmes (speaker)
Page Number: 69
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

Run up a bill with the devil all your life, and then sneak out when pay time comes! Boh!

Related Characters: Tom Loker (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Bible
Page Number: 75
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

You ought to be ashamed, John! Poor, homeless, houseless creatures! It’s a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I’ll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance . . . .

Related Characters: Senator and Mrs. Bird (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Bible
Page Number: 90
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

But you haven’t got us. We don’t own your laws; we don’t own your country; we stand here as free, under God’s sky, as you are; and, by the great God that made us, we’ll fight for our liberty till we die.

Related Characters: George Harris (speaker), Tom Loker, Marks
Page Number: 224
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

On this abstract question of slavery there can, as I think, be but one opinion. Planters, who have money to make by it—clergymen, who have planters to please—politicians, who want to rule by it—may warp and bend language . . . they can press nature and the Bible . . . into their service; but, after all, neither they nor the world believe in it one particle the more.

Related Characters: Augustine St. Clare (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Bible
Page Number: 252
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

But, of course, I didn’t want you to confess things you didn’t do . . . that’s telling a lie, just as much as the other.

Related Characters: Miss Ophelia (speaker), Topsy
Page Number: 279
Explanation and Analysis:

Laws, now, is it?

Related Characters: Topsy (speaker)
Page Number: 279
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 24 Quotes

It’s jest no use tryin’ to keep Miss Eva here . . . She’s got the Lord’s mark in her forehead.

Related Characters: Uncle Tom (speaker), Eva St. Clare
Page Number: 313
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

Mas’r, if you mean to kill me, kill me; but, as to my raising my hand agin any one here, I never shall,—I’ll die first!”

Related Characters: Uncle Tom (speaker), Simon Legree
Related Symbols: The Bible
Page Number: 406
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 38 Quotes

Utmost agony, woe, degradation, want, and loss of all things, shall only hasten on the process by which he [the slave] shall be made a king and a priest unto God!

Page Number: 446
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 40 Quotes

O, Mas’r! don’t bring this great sin on your soul. It will hurt you more than ‘twill me! Do the worst you can, my troubles’ll be over soon; but, if ye don’t repent, yours won’t never end!

Related Characters: Uncle Tom (speaker), Simon Legree
Page Number: 469
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 43 Quotes

I trust that the development of Africa is to be essentially a Christian one. If not a dominant and commanding race, they are, at least, an affectionate, magnanimous, and forgiving one.

Related Characters: George Harris (speaker)
Page Number: 494
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Quotes

A day of grace is yet held out to us. Both North and South have been guilty before God; and the Christian church has a heavy account to answer . . . .For, not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God!

Related Symbols: The Bible
Page Number: 511
Explanation and Analysis: