What Role Did Women Play In Puritan Religion

There are many controversies about the roles of women when the first forms of the Puritan religion started making its way to the new found America. It seemed that women were always subjected to being subordinate to men anywhere in the world, but especially in the newly founded American Puritan religion that was being derived from the first form of Puritan religion found in Europe. Women were supposed to happily submit to their husband’s wants and desires because that is what God, whom they base their religion from, set in law for them. Not only were they deemed subordinate to all men, but they were also not allowed to teach the word of god because men were viewed as closer to god than women. In Ben Barker-Benfield’s document, “Anne Hutchinson

Ben Barker-Benfield’s document shows that Anne Hutchinson and other women that rebelled as she did by “preaching” about covenants of grace instead of covenants of works may have had more power than they thought they had because of the sexual threat that women imposed by being able to gather many followers of her new found religion, Hutchinsonian, and keep faithful followers. Barker-Benfield also makes sure to show how the Puritan religion relied on the men having power because of their covenant with God. During Anne Hutchinson’s trial everyone that was interrogating her was male because they were the head of the church, which was in charge of the community, and the men in charge only voted other males to be head of the community because this is how they expressed their relationship with God. In, “The Examination of Anne Hutchinson” the men of the church did not care that Hutchinson was preaching something wrong they only cared

If the men have to view themselves as women in order to show their relationship with God, then Puritan women might just have a closer relationship with God then they have been taught by the Puritan men. By making the women submissive to them they are also being able to portray themselves in a “God like” manner because the way the Puritan men view their relationship with God by being submissive to him. “They [Puritan men] were dependent on women for their own model of feminine behavior…,” says Barker-Benfield. The Puritan men needed women to act feminine because without this they would have no way to portray how they have to seem in their relationship with God to be able to keep their covenant with God and without this they would have no reason to make women submissive to