Like her contemporary Frederick Douglass, Harriet exposes some of the same realities about religion in both the north and the south. She explains that religion was a way for slaveholders to keep their slaves in check - ministers delivered sermons about slaves obeying their masters - and to assuage their pricked consciences. Religious whites in the south were often paragons of hypocrisy, thinking that paying tithes and attending church services meant that their flagrant violence, lust, and greed were negated. The practitioners of real Christianity were the slaves, who meekly and humbly submitted themselves to God's will and practiced the virtues of charity, love, and patience. While some northerners were better, such as the Rev. Durham and his wife, others were afflicted by the same hypocrisy. Harriet touted the English as the only other real Christians she met.
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