by BBT
Right-wing
fundamentalists often claim that the United States is a “Christian
country,” some even going so far as to argue that it should be
governed by “Biblical Law.” I'd like to take you
back in time to look at the theocratic government that existed in
northeastern Massachusetts in the 1600s and the terrible consequences
of its theocratic excesses; these influenced the founders of the
United States to reject theocracy in favor of separation of church
and state.
Let's
start with a brief recollection that, by the 17th Century
in Europe, there were already many examples of why the fusion of
religion and political power was, often literally, a double-edged
sword – nice for those wielding the power, but not so good for
those on the wrong side of the religious-political divide. They were
often persecuted, stripped of their power and property, and exiled or
executed. The power balance often shifted rather quickly, too, as the
“ins” became “outs.” No one was immune, least of all royalty.
English King Charles I, who had incurred the suspicion of the
Puritans who controlled Parliament when he married a Catholic, and
whose tumultuous reign included many military misadventures, led
England to civil war and was beheaded in 1649. His Catholic
grandmother, Mary, Queen of Scots, had met the same fate in 1587
during Elizabeth I's reign.
Death of Mary, Queen of Scots
This
turmoil in England took place during the first century of English
colonization of North America. At the same time, England was battling
for control of Ireland, Scotland and Wales and engaged in struggles
for European supremacy as other countries (especially Spain and
France and to a lesser extent Portugal, Holland and Germany) were
also colonizing the Americas. Almost all of these political struggles
had religious and economic overtones or underpinnings.
The
disputes were far more complex than “Catholics vs. Protestants.”
Not only Catholics, but Quakers, Lutherans, Mennonites, French
Huguenots and other Christian groups were persecuted in England,
Holland, Germany, France and elsewhere; where they had political
power, they persecuted others. Jews were often marginalized in Europe
and America. Religious affiliations were very complicated and very
political. More on this here. While differences about religious dogma could be significant, it was
the fusion of religion with political and economic power that often
led to war and conflict.
There
was also a real belief in witches who actively partnered with the
devil to harm to people, crops and livestock. Witch-craft explained natural disasters, and “witches” - most of whom were women - were
often scapegoated during plagues, droughts, crop failures etc. From
the late middle ages to the late 17th Century, an
estimated 80,000-100,000 Europeans were executed for witch-craft.
Many more were accused.
"Witches" burned at the stake
Against
this backdrop, religious persecution was probably the rule more than
the exception if you were not one of the “ins” at any particular
point in time. For these, and many other social, economic, political
and other reasons, many people chose to take the dangerous voyage to
an unknown land.
From
the outset, there were distinctions among the colonies, and within
them, about religion. New York and Pennsylvania attracted Mennonites,
Lutherans, Quakers, Jews and others who were persecuted in Europe. In
Massachusetts, the Pilgrims who settled the Plymouth Colony were
“Separatists” who did not follow the Church of England, unlike the Puritans of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded a decade later. The Puritans' religious “platform” was to “purify” the Church of
England with rigid interpretations of biblical tenets.
The
Massachusetts Bay Company was rigidly Puritan, but even so, it
rejected the call by some adherents for government strictly based on
Biblical law. Instead, Massachusetts colonial law expanded upon
English law and incorporated theocratic admonitions. The Body of Liberties was the
basis of the first Massachusetts code of laws.
The
Body of Liberties is in many ways a remarkably progressive document
for its time, enumerating the rights of colonial “freemen” and even including some rights for women, children, servants, “strangers and
foreigners” and even animals. Slavery was ostensibly abolished,
except that the exceptions in effect legalized slavery in most
instances. (Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1780.) In all, these
laws, as they applied to civil matters, were remarkably progressive
for the 17th Century.
They
were not progressive as they applied to religious beliefs, however.
Missing church on Sunday was a significant offense that could result
in imprisonment, whippings and fines. If you were convicted of being
a witch, or a blasphemer, or an adulterer, or a believer in anything
other than what the Puritans believed, that was a capital crime for
which the punishment was being put to death.
Quaker
Mary Dyer being led to her execution
And
they did. Quakers, a new religious group in the 1650s, were persecuted and hung in Massachusetts because they refused to adhere to Puritan orthodoxy. They disrupted church
services, engaged in civil disobedience, defied bans and persistently
challenged the Puritans' rules. Even on the gallows, they steadfastly
refused to save themselves by betraying their beliefs. Here is an
account of the persecution of Quakers in Massachusetts, which ended
when King Charles II intervened on their behalf. (Yes, by then, the English were more tolerant than the Puritans.)
There
was dissent against the Puritans' rigid theocracy from the earliest
days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Roger Williams, a brilliant
and charismatic minister who arrived in Massachusetts in 1631, was a
separatist who rejected Puritan orthodoxy and preached tolerance. He
was a strong and passionate advocate of freedom of religion and the
separation of church and state, and is said to have strongly
influenced Thomas Jefferson and other founders on this issue. He was
offered the ministry in Boston when he first arrived from England,
but declined because he refused to adhere to their strict tenets,
arguing among other things that there should be no punishments for
blasphemy, heresy, adultery or other religious transgressions. He
became the minister in Salem, where he was generally well-respected,
although his “radical” ideas continued to attract attention. In
1635, the Massachusetts General Court convicted him of sedition and
heresy, ordering him to be banished. He narrowly avoided being
jailed, escaping on foot during a blizzard and walking 105 miles in
deep snow to Narragansett Bay, where he was taken in by Native
Americans. He went on to found Providence Plantation, where laws only
applied to “civil things,” not religion – the first “western”
government with separation of church and state. The area attracted
many Quakers, Baptists, Jews, and others who were persecuted elsewhere, and was
the most tolerant and progressive of the colonies – so much so that
Connecticut, Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay Colonies tried to get
it abolished. Williams went to England and succeeded in getting a
charter for the area that eventually became Rhode Island.
Roger Williams and Narragansetts
Anne
Hutchinson was another charismatic religious leader. She led
well-attended weekly meetings of women in Boston that professed a
“covenant of grace” that differed from Puritan orthodoxy. Her
gatherings became so popular that she had to expand them to include
men, including then-Governor Henry Vane. The Puritans became
increasingly alarmed at her “free grace” views and growing
influence, which were at the root of the Antimonian Controversy. The Puritans
voted Vane and others supporting “free grace” out of office in
1637 and prosecuted Hutchinson later that year. She was convicted of
contempt and sedition and banished; she escaped to Providence
Plantation, establishing a settlement nearby. These settlements, with other religious dissidents,
united and formed the colony and later the state of Rhode Island,
which became a bastion of religious tolerance. The colony passed laws
outlawing witchcraft trials, imprisonment for debt, most capital
punishment; Rhode Island also outlawed slavery in 1652.
The
Puritans were not only concerned with ridding Massachusetts of
religious dissenters; they soon turned their attention to
witch-craft. From 1648-1663, 80 people were
accused and 13 women and 2 men were executed. The first was Margaret Jones, a midwife and healer whose 1648 execution was witnessed by then-12-yearold John Hale, who later played a key role in the witch-hunts of 1692. In 1688, Cotton Mather, the influential minister of the Old North Church, zealously persecuted a laundress known as “Goody
Glover” for bewitching the Goodwin children; he witnessed her
execution, took in her children and wrote a book Memorable
Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions.
This book quickly
became a “best seller” in Massachusetts. Perhaps as a result, in
1689 there were enough accusations of witch-craft that the jail in
Salem could not hold all those accused.
This
all came to a boil in 1692,
the year of the infamous Salem Witch Trials. The witch hunt began
not in the city of Salem but in Salem Village (now the town of
Danvers; see map here); soon it spread
to communities throughout northeastern Massachusetts. This account suggests that unrest due to King William's War and other socio-economic factors played
a role.
The
trouble began in January 1692 when two girls in the household of
Reverend Parris started having “fits” and behaving strangely –
much like the Goodwin children as described in Mather's book. (It's
surprising that the girls themselves weren't accused of being
witches; some say that is because they were so young that they were
presumed innocent, yet a four-year old child was accused.) Soon, other girls started showing similar
behavior. (Interestingly, no boys were affected.) A doctor could find
no physical ailments and concluded witch-craft was the cause of their
afflictions.
Salem Witch Trial
This
led to the accusations. The first accused were women who attracted attention because they were outspoken, not submissive, provocative,
“unpuritan,” or social outcasts.
Sarah
Good and Sarah Osborne were accused in late February, along with
Tituba, the Parris family's slave. Tituba
confessed to being a witch and was spared; her confession was
instrumental in causing the hysteria to expand, but she later
recanted it. Sarah Good, who had been born to a prosperous family but lost her property in a
legal battle, by 1692 was a pregnant beggar and outcast who was an easy
target; she was hung in July and her infant daughter was born and died
in the jail. Good's
4-year old daughter was also accused and imprisoned. Sarah Osborne may
have been targeted because she hadn't attended church due to illness. She was an in-law of the Putnams and had been involved in disputes with them. She
was never tried; she died in jail in Boston after being held captive
for several months. Bridget Bishop was another woman who did not fit
the mold of women in Puritan society; she was a tavern keeper, had
been married 3 times, was described by some as promiscuous, and
had been twice accused of witch-craft previously. She was the first
of the accused to be tried because the magistrates felt that it
would be easy to convict her because of the prior accusations. They
were right; she was the first to be hung, in June of 1692.
While
those accused at the outset of the witch hunt were all “outcasts”
in some fashion – they did not conform to the Puritan model –
this soon changed. That spring and summer, Martha Corey and Rebecca
Nurse and many other well-respected members of the communities were
accused, and some, including Corey and Nurse, were convicted and hung that summer.
Martha Corey was known for her piety and regularly attended church; however, she did not believe in witch-craft and was outspoken about her opinion that the girls making the accusations were lying. At that point, they accused her. She had no doubt that she would be exonerated; however, the girls' actions at Corey's trial gave the impression that they were possessed and controlled by Corey, leading to her conviction. She was hung in September.
Rebecca Nurse was an elderly, pious, well-respected resident of Salem Village. She
was accused by Anne Putnam and her daughter, among others, although
Putnam's brother-in-law and others in the family were among those who
spoke in Nurse's defense. Apparently Nurse had criticized the younger
Anne Putnam for bad behavior on several occasions. Another accusation
came from neighbor Sarah Holten, who claimed that Nurse cast a spell
that caused her husband to die, after they had argued because his
pigs destroyed Nurse's garden. 39 people risked
their own lives by signing a petition attesting to her good character and seeking her release. She was initially acquitted, but the
girls accusing her starting having fits in the courtroom after the
verdict was read, and Chief Magistrate Stoughton ordered the jury to
reconsider. Nurse was then convicted and hung in July. To the end,
she proclaimed her innocence:
“I
can say before my Eternal Father I am innocent and God will clear my
innocency…The Lord knows I have not hurt them. I am an innocent
person.”
Rebecca Nurse's sisters, Mary
Easty and Sarah Cloyce, were also accused, and Mary was executed.
Sarah was released from prison in January 1693.
Rebecca
Nurse Homestead
Remarkably, part of Nurse's
300-acre 17th Century farm and her house are still intact
in the midst of a very suburban area; the property includes a graveyard with her
remains (dug up from Gallows Hill and moved by her grandson) and
those of several other victims of the 1692 witch trials. Three Sovereigns for Sarah was filmed there. (The Salem Village Historic District is well worth
a visit; however, I was alarmed to see that several key buildings in
other parts of Danvers, including the Israel Putnam house and Sarah Osborne's
house, are falling into disrepair.)
Elizabeth Howe was a cousin of Rebecca Nurse. Howe's husband was blind, leaving
her with the tasks of running the farm as well as the household. She
had an “assertive personality” and had been accused of causing
fits in a girl ten years earlier. In 1692, she was accused of
afflicting cows, horses and pigs. At her trial, she said: “If
it was the last moment I was to live, God knows I am innocent of any
thing of this nature”.
She was hung. Here is an excellent account of Howe's story.
Martha Carrier's “crime
was not witchcraft but an independence of mind and an unsubmissive
character.” Susannah Martin apparently ruffled feathers by contesting her father's will. Anne Pudeator was a nurse and midwife who was accused after some of those
in her care died or babies were stillborn. Wilmot
Redd was an “eccentric” character with a volatile temper who was
known to get into lively arguments with her neighbors in Marblehead.
Margaret Scott of Rowley was an elderly beggar. "Non-conformist" Sarah Wildes, Mary and Alice Parker were also executed.
John
Proctor was the first man accused (along with his wife, Elizabeth). Proctor was a prosperous farmer with large landholdings in the
southern part of Salem Village, in what is now the city of Peabody.
He is one of the main characters in Arthur Miller's play, The
Crucible (which is not
historically accurate). He was executed and his wife was also
condemned, but her execution was delayed because she was pregnant,
and she was released the following year.
Harvard
graduate George Burroughs, who had been a minister in Salem Village,
was hung the same day as Proctor, even though he had no “witches
marks” on his body and was able to recite the Lord's Prayer, which
Puritans believed that witches could not do. After he spoke, the
crowd was so moved that they began calling for him to be freed, but Reverend Cotton Mather stepped in and argued that he and four others should be executed.
80-year
old Giles Corey, whose wife Martha was accused, was tortured and
crushed to death because he refused to enter a plea, thus preventing
the court from seizing his property from his heirs.
John Willard was accused after he refused to arrest those whom he thought were innocent; he was hung. Samuel Wardell, his wife and step-daughter were all accused. He confessed to
witch-craft to save himself, but then recanted, and was hung. George Jacobs, Sr. was also executed, based on testimony by his granddaughter, who was also accused and was trying to save herself.
Convictions
were often based on hearsay and “spectral evidence.” This was
testimony based on visions and dreams that the accusers – many of
whom were children - claimed to have, with no tangible proof. Spectral evidence did
not meet the legal standard even then, but the magistrates allowed it
anyway. The trials led to the execution of 20 people; at least 5
others died in prison. Another 150 people were jailed in horrible conditions that year, and
200 more were accused. By the fall, more leaders were speaking out against the trials and particularly against spectral evidence.
Cotton
Mather
Several
Puritan ministers like Cotton Mather played a key role in instigating
the witch-craft hysteria; others helped bring it to an end. Reverend Samuel Parris, minister of Salem Village, helped inflame the hysteria that began in
his own household. Reverend John Hale of Beverly testified against
the accused in several cases, but his views changed dramatically when
his wife and several parishioners were accused. He became a critic of
the proceedings and two years later wrote a forthright account,
admitting that they had lost their way and became irrational out of
fear. Reverend Dane in Andover, where many accusations took place,
argued against the hysteria and especially against the use of
spectral evidence, and is considered one of the heroes who helped
save people from death. Samuel Willard played a similar role in Salem
Village and helped foster reconciliation after the end of the
hysteria.
Ipswich town records indicate that ministers there spoke out against
the witch-craft accusations in 1689 and again in 1692.
Even Cotton
Mather wrote a letter in early June condemning the use of spectral
evidence. His father Increase Mather (who was the influential
president of Harvard College) decried the use of spectral evidence in
a letter in early October, writing: "It
were better that ten suspected witches should escape than one
innocent person be condemned."
Thomas Brattle and Robert Calef were community leaders in
Boston who were highly critical of the witch trials and whose
critiques helped bring them to an end. Calef was a particular critic
of Cotton Mather, blaming him for establishing fertile ground for the
hysteria to occur. His book More Wonders of the Invisible World is
a direct rebuttal of Cotton Mather's 1693 book Wonders of the
Invisible World; Calef's book is
one of the best contemporaneous reports on the witch trials.
Eventually,
the accusers went too far, accusing more and more respected members
of the community, including the wives of Hale and other ministers,
and even the wife of Governor Phips. In the fall he disallowed
spectral evidence and disbanded the special court; early the next
year he put an end to the trials, and in May he pardoned and released
the remaining prisoners.
“And
now Nineteen persons having been hang'd, and one prest
to death,
and Eight more condemned, in all Twenty and Eight, of which above a
third part were Members of some of the Churches of N. England, and
more than half of them of a good Conversation in general, and not one
clear'd; about Fifty having confest themselves to be Witches, of
which not one Executed; above an Hundred and Fifty in Prison, and Two
Hundred more accused; the Special Commision of Oyer and Terminer
comes to a period. -- Robert
Calef
Governor
Phips wrote:
“When
I put an end to the Court there ware at least fifty persons in
prision in great misery by reason of the extream cold and their
poverty, most of them having only spectre evidence against them and
their mittimusses being
defective, I caused some of them to be lettout upon bayle and put the
Judges upon consideration of a way to reliefe others and to prevent
them from perishing in prision, upon which some of them were
convinced and acknowledged that their former proceedings were too
violent and not grounded upon a right foundation ... The stop
put to the first method of proceedings hath dissipated the blak cloud
that threatened this Province with destruccion.” Governor William
Phips,
February 21st, 1693
Of
course, it is hard to put ourselves in the 1692 mindset of those who
actually believed in witch-craft and to whom the devil was a real
entity. Still, how could the accusers – many of them children –
be given such credence? This is not just hindsight; many argued at the time that there was no
basis to believe that their testimony was true – it made more sense
to believe that it was “made up.” But it was accepted by the
infamous Court, and people were executed on that basis.
There
was also a huge 17th Century Catch-22. If you confessed to
being a witch, you would be spared, but if you didn't you'd be
executed. Only those who were most true to their religion, refusing
to lie and steadfastly maintaining their innocence, were condemned
and executed. That in itself would seem to be a red flag that the
process was seriously flawed. Who couldn't see that? Why wasn't it obvious. Religious
zealotry can blind people to reason.
If anything good could come of such a travesty, the
Salem Witch Trials have served for centuries as a cautionary tale
against intolerance and mass hysteria. Apt parallels were
made during the McCarthy era, when the anti-communist fervor led to a
similar suspension of people's rights and lives were ruined based on
hearsay and associations. Arthur
Miller's play “The Crucible” was inspired by this very parallel.
The
Salem Witch Trials set a clear example of why the separation of
church and state is necessary. I would take it a step farther:
arguably, all religion is “spectral” - there is nothing tangible
that proves the tenets of the world's religions. They are based
on faith, not evidence. People's faith is real, but in any religion,
because the articles of faith are subject to people's
interpretations, there will always be differences of opinion and
interpretation about what they mean, or what is most important.
That's the nature of the beast.
Many
of the founders recognized the evils that men do in the name of
religion. Practically speaking, they also had to blend the interests
of many people of different faiths, and some of no faith, to create a
viable political union. That included Rhode Island, founded on
principles of religious liberty and separation of church and state.
It included Dutch Mennonites in New York, German Lutherans in
Pennsylvania, Catholics, Jews, Episcopalians, Baptists, deists and,
yes, atheists. In fact, a number of key revolutionaries and founders
of the nation were deists, including George Washington, James
Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine and Ethan
Allen. They wisely built a wall to separate church and state.
We've
already had a theocratic tragedy in our early history which can serve
as a cautionary tale, if only we are willing to take heed: though
religion is supposed to be a force for good, mixing it with political
control is unwise and can lead to persecution and bloodshed.
More
than once it has been said…that the Salem witchcraft was the rock
on which the theocracy shattered.
— George
Lincoln Burr
Yet
some don't understand the history or choose not to heed the lesson.
The Dominionists are the Puritans of today, but with a much more
extreme political agenda, fewer scruples, and a stronger
determination to combine their religious beliefs with government.
Their 7 Mountains strategy
aims to take control of business, government, media, arts and
entertainment, education, family and religion. Here's a site that has
a lot of information on this topic. Their infiltration of all these areas is well underway; perhaps the
infiltration of not only the civilian government, but of the U.S.military, is particularly troubling.
We can
learn from history, or we can repeat it.
