The Bible: A Spiritual Guide or a Deadly Weapon?

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The puritans were incredibly gullible people, especially when it came to their reliance upon, and selfish use of religion. They used the Bible more as a weapon than a spiritual guide. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Abigail Williams accused Tituba of conjuring with the Devil to stay out of trouble because she knew almost every one of the townspeople would believe a white child over an uneducated negro slave. Although the puritans as a whole were quite credulous for believing that witchcraft is real, in Act three, the higher authority of the town showed how gullible they truly are. During court, to get back at Mary for telling the truth of how the girls are lying, Abigail pretends to be getting attacked by a yellow bird said to be Mary’s spirit. Judge Danforth says, “Mary Warren. Draw back your spirit out of them! (Miller 116). He believes the girls even though Mary Warren is clearly sitting there denying all that is happening and he goes on to questioning her and asks if she has compacted with the Devil. Even Danforth fell into the spiraling pit of lies that the girls were coming up with, so one can only imagine how gullible they all must be if even their leaders fell for it. Religion is everything to them, and they will believe it no matter what. The townspeople’s lives greatly revolved around the church and the idea of a higher being controlling every aspect of their life from before birth to after death. Puritans were thought to be unholy if they did not regularly attend church and follow the Ten Commandments. Their religion determined everything to them, from matters of life and death, to more simple things like if the crops were going to grow. Though rare, some of the Puritans did actually get sick of being preached to all the time. John Proctor says, “Can you speak one minute without we land in Hell again? I am sick of Hell!” in which Parris replies, “It is

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