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Consequences of anne hutchinson trial
Essay on puritans religion
Essay on puritans religion
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The Threat of Anne Hutchinson In November 1637, Anne Hutchinson was tried by the Massachusetts Bay General Court and was later put under house arrest to be scrutinized by the church. It seems most probable that Anne Hutchinson was tried for Arminianism and holding meetings that supported Arminianism in her home. Arminianism was the belief that people could achieve salvation by doing good with their life. Puritans believed strongly in Calvinist ideas, which meant that only God and his grace saved the people. They believed that salvation was for the predetermined not for everyone like the Arminians believed. Puritan leaders had allowed arguments about bible passages or how Christians should live but to disrupt their idea of a “perfect city”
Anne Hutchinson has long been seen as a strong religious dissenter who paved the way for religious freedom in the strictly Puritan environment of New England. Another interpretation of the controversy surrounding Anne Hutchinson asserts that she was simply a loving wife and mother whose charisma and personal ideas were misconstrued to be a radical religious movement. Since this alleged religious movement was led by a woman, it was quickly dealt with by the Puritan fathers as a real threat. Whatever her motives, she was clearly a great leader in the cause of religious toleration in America and the advancement of women in society. Although Anne Hutchinson is historically documented to have been banished as a religious dissenter, the real motive for her persecution was that she challenged the traditional subordinate role of women in Puritan society by expressing her own religious convictions.
The Puritan society was a close knit one with religion as the core keeping it together. Whole congregations would go to the New World together, following their minister to wherever he led them to. Sarah Good was a target of this environment due to the fact that she was not conforming to the everyday life around her which led people to believe something was wrong with her followed by the accusations of performing witchcraft.
When conducting research for my project, I came across a website that contained a few primary sources regarding the Salem Witch Trials. One of these primary sources was the photo of a legal document explaining the death warrant and reasons for execution of a woman named Bridget Bishop. Bishop was claimed to be a witch in Salem during the year 1692, and the document explaining her significance involving witchcraft resides in the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. My thesis for this primary source is that the judge and jury believed they were seeking justice by executing Bishop, a woman whose death was truthfully based on her differences as a person rather than actual crimes she committed.
Literary historicism, in the context of this discussion, describes the interpretation of literary or historical texts with respect to the cultural and temporal conditions in which they were produced. This means that the text not only catalogues how individuals respond to their particular circumstances, but also chronicles the movements and inclinations of an age as expressed in the rhetorical devices of its literature. Evaluating the trial of Anne Hutchinson within such a theoretical framework means speculating on the genesis of her theological beliefs with recourse to prevailing theories of gender, class, and interpretation. Because texts are self-contained spheres of discourse, nuanced interpretations of them can be undertaken with greater assiduity than in the case of individuals whose private experiences remain largely concealed from the interpreter's knowledge. A historical analysis of Anne Hutchinson herself is hence, in the present discussion, secondary to the analysis of how she comes across in textual discourse as a palimpsest of seventeenth century gender controversy.
Abigail Adams an American Woman was written by Charles W. Akers. His biographical book is centered on Abigail Adams the wife of John Adams, the second president of the United States, and the mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president. She was the All-American woman, from the time of the colonies to its independence. Abigail Adams was America's first women's rights leader. She was a pioneer in the path to women in education, independence, and women's rights.
In 1702, the general court finally ruled the trials unlawful. Soon after the main accuser Anne Putman was made to apologize to the people of Salem, as well as Samuel Sewall, a judge during the trials, publicly confessed of guilt and apologized. Reverend Samuel Sewall also confessed of his misjudgment, but he mostly blamed others. Massachusetts even formally apologized for the event in Salem. Even though it took ten years the trials were finally over and the citizens of Salem were able to live with the right to having a fairer trial. Unfortunately, after this whole ordeal the Salem community became separated.
Anne Bradstreet and Jonathan Edwards lived during a period in time where religion was the basis and foundation of everyday life. Bradstreet and Edwards were both raised in prominent, wealthy, and educated families. Both were extremely intelligent and shared similar religious beliefs. However, the way in which each of them brought forth those beliefs was vastly different.
Abigail Adams: A Revolutionary American Woman. Abigail Adams married a man destined to be a major leader of the American Revolution and the second President of the United States. Although she married and raised men that became such significant figures during their time, she herself played an important role in the American society. The events that happened in her life, starting from childhood and ending in her adult years, led her to be a revolutionary woman. Three main reasons behind her becoming such a strong, independent woman was the fact that she married a man who had an important role in politics, growing up with no education, and raising a family basically by herself.
“To think I have had more than 60 years of hard struggle for a little liberty, and then to die without it seems so cruel.” (Susan B. Anthony)
In 1630, the Massachusetts Bay Company set sail to the New World in hope of reforming the Church of England. While crossing the Atlantic, John Winthrop, the puritan leader of the great migration, delivered perhaps the most famous sermon aboard the Arbella, entitled “A Model of Christian Charity.” Winthrop’s sermon gave hope to puritan immigrants to reform the Church of England and set an example for future immigrants. The Puritan’s was a goal to get rid of the offensive features that Catholicism left behind when the Protestant Reformation took place. Under Puritanism, there was a constant strain to devote your life to God and your neighbors. Unlike the old England, they wanted to prove that New England was a community of love and individual worship to God. Therefore, they created a covenant with God and would live their lives according to the covenant. Because of the covenant, Puritans tried to abide by God’s law and got rid of anything that opposed their way of life. Between 1630 and the 18th century, the Puritans tried to create a new society in New England by creating a covenant with God and living your life according to God’s rule, but in the end failed to reform the Church of England. By the mid 1630’s, threats to the Puritans such as Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, and Thomas Hooker were being banned from the Puritan community for their divergent beliefs. 20 years later, another problem arose with the children of church members and if they were to be granted full membership to the church. Because of these children, a Halfway Covenant was developed to make them “halfway” church members. And even more of a threat to the Puritan society was their notion that they were failing God, because of the belief that witches existed in 1692.
She admits that she suffers through internal conflicts regarding her religious beliefs multiple times in “To My Dear Children”, even explicitly stating “I have argued thus with myself” (Bradstreet 164). Her struggle with what to believe was so great that she nearly abandons her original goal of writing to her children. This letter starts off addressing her children directly, but after the first paragraph she does not write in second person, with one exception, until the conclusion. Bradstreet instead writes the entire middle section about the issues she faced in her lifetime regarding her religion and how she overcame these problems. This gives great perspective into the mindset of all of her neighbors in Massachusetts as well. The “city upon a hill” (Winthrop 149) that John Winthrop told the Puritans they could create was not a perfect utopia even though they were finally free from the oppression of the Catholic Church. Doubts about whether God was truly on their side ensued as the Puritans discovered how laborious it was to live on the land and away from the luxury they were accustomed to in Europe. They began to question their own beliefs, just as Anne Bradstreet did. She presents these doubts in her letter and provides an understanding as to how this was not the perfect society it was meant to be. She also defends all of her doubts with
One Puritan woman, Anne Hutchinson, was believed to have predictions from God. This infuriated the Puritans because they did not believe in the idea of God giving her visions and thoughts. They believed that Satan was the one giving her these visions and thoughts. Consequently, the Puritans then banished her into the wilderness outside of Massachusetts Bay. This shows that the Puritans treated anyone who did not totally agree with them as an outcast to their society.
In Puritan led Massachusetts Bay Colony during the days of Anne Hutchinson was an intriguing place to have lived. It was designed ideally as a holy mission in the New World called the “city upon a hill,” a mission to provide a prime example of how protestant lives should have subsisted of. A key ingredient to the success of the Puritan community was the cohesion of the community as a whole, which was created by a high level of conformity in the colony. Puritan leaders provided leadership for all facets of life; socially, economically, religiously, and even politically. A certain hierarchy was very apparent in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in which ministers always seemed to have gotten their way. Governor Winthrop got his way in 1637 by banishing a woman, Anne Hutchinson, whom he thought posed a threat to the structure of the colony. I believe that there is a legit rationale for her banishment, this being her religious ideas that were very close to that of the Antinomians who Governor Winthrop was not too fond of. I also think that this was not the primal reason. In my mind, Anne’s gender played a large role in determining whether or not she actually posed a serious threat to the solidarity of Massachusetts.
The male Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony did not like women to think that they were above them, such evidence is the trial of Anne Hutchinson at Massachusetts Bay in 1637. The document is a transcripts of Anne’s trial. Anne Hutchinson was a rebel during her time and she was fond of the concept of Antinomianism, if your not as fond with this concept,let’s break it down “Antinomiansim” is a greek word it is formed from the words “anti” and “nomos”, “anti” means against and “nomos” means law when combined they form antinomianism which means in its simplest form, against the law or against laws. The transcript was most likely at first kept just for records but eventually it was kept not only to preserve history but to capture the human spirit.
Accusations of witchcraft ran rampant in the 17th century colonial settlements in the United States. The individuals accused, mostly women, were put on trial and punished, if found guilty. The most well-known of such cases on public record are the Salem Witch Trials. Between February, 1692 and May, 1693, hearings and prosecutions were set up to deal with those accused of dabbling in the dark arts in the cities of Andover, Salem, and Ipswich, all in Massachusetts Bay. These trials came to commonly be referred to as the Salem Witch Trials because some of the most notorious cases were heard in the Oyer and Terminer courts in Salem. At the time, practicing witchcraft was considered a serious crime, and was often punished with serious consequences.