11: City Upon A Hill

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A PRODUCT OF THE WHISPERFORGE: SOUND & STORY, BROUGHT TO LIFE

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JOHN WINTHROP: The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as his own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways. So that we shall see much more of his wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when he shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, “the Lord make it like that of New England.” For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.

[[MUSIC: “Lakeside Path” by Blue Dot Sessions]]

KATE: Hello, and welcome to Remarkable Providences, the podcast about Puritans and prejudice, religion and reformation, and, of course, the Salem Witch Trials. I’m your tour guide, Kate Devorak.

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Governor John Winthrop delivered his famous sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity” in 1630, aboard the ship Arbella, as it brought Puritan colonists from England to start a new life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In it, he laid the groundwork for American Exceptionalism, declaring that the colonists were chosen by God to settle the New World in His name, and that the eyes of the world were on them. A bit egocentric, but that’s Americans for you. They were off to establish a new kingdom on earth, a place where they could put their religious beliefs to the test. A place that the rest of the world would look to as an example of the ideal society. And they better not mess it up.

A quick tour guide asterisk- I am by no means an expert on Puritanism, so much of this is going to be a general overview. The movement’s formation and influence in England in the 17th century are big big topics, so please forgive me if I kinda skim some stuff to get us back to New England. Also, much to the horror of my Puritan subjects, I was raised Catholic, and that’s more my religious wheelhouse, so I might draw from that a bit. My apologies to John Calvin.

Winthrop’s fleet of ships brought about 700 colonists to New England as part of a massive wave of Puritan resettlement known as the Great Migration, which spanned from the 1620s to the 1640s. The Puritans left England in droves to escape religious persecution and political unrest, and I suppose Boston is as good a place as any to start over, like in that Augustana song. The Puritan migration was actually a lot like Wild Wild Country- weird cult moves in, starts taking up all the real estate, and poisons the locals to gain political power. Only the Puritans were much less fun than the Rajneeshi.

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What makes a Puritan? The Puritans pretty much believed what was par for the course as far as protestants went at the time, only a touch more intense. They acknowledged the existence of the human soul and a single God, through whom said soul could possibly be saved. They believed in the teachings of Jesus Christ, as written in the Bible, which they took as moral law. They believed in the concept of Original Sin, in which human beings are all born with sin in their hearts because a woman ate an apple at the beginning of time, and dudes never learned to let that go. There was a possibility for that sin to be washed away and for one to reach salvation through introspection, religious devotion, and good works.

What sets the Puritan movement apart is their dedication to so-called “pure” worship and doctrine. The capital-C “Church” had become corrupted in the several centuries since the resurrection of Christ, and was too bogged down with borderline-pagan rituals, an unnecessary religious hierarchy, and a general sense of lackadaisy among its members. People just didn’t respect the Sabbath like they used to! So the Puritans sought to bring things back to basics- emphasis on a personal relationship with the Bible, the sanctity of the Sabbath, and the value of minister’s sermons.

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Since a big part of Puritanism was being able to read and interpret the lessons of the Bible for oneself, they were an incredibly literate people. Literacy rates in Puritan New England were higher than they are today, which is a totally fun, not at all depressing fact. This may be why there was such an emphasis on the Devil’s Book and the signing thereof during the witch trials. These folks were just wild about contracts, and given the importance of the Bible in these people’s lives, it tracks that the infernal enemy would have an unholy counterpart.

Another key thing about the Puritans is that they were Calvinists, meaning that they ascribed to the teachings of John Calvin, specifically in regards to predetermination. Not everyone is bound for salvation.

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God, in his infinite wisdom, decided at the beginning of time whether a person was destined for heaven or hell. No amount of good deeds could change your status. Nothing really matters! But still, you shouldn’t be a dick or use this as an excuse to sink into nihilism. Whether or not you have free will, you still live in a society, and being aware that your actions have consequences (predetermined or no), goes a long way in keeping a community going. The best one could do was reflect on their lives and individual relationship with God and hope that at some point, God would reveal Himself and designate you as one of the saved, also called the Elect or living Saints. This revelation of salvation is also known as conversion. The saints of the church received communion once every six weeks, that’s the helpful sacrificial snack that nourishes your connection with Christ. Only the children of saints could undergo the sacrament of baptism, which signified the infant’s union with Christ and was supposed to set them on the path to their own conversion.

The New England Puritans were also congregationalists, meaning that they would do away with the system of bishops and the authority of a central church, with each individual congregation having control of their own affairs. Each church would be run by a council of saints, and all members pledged to a covenant between their congregation and God.

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A common misconception when talking about the English migration to New England is that everybody belonged to the same religious sect. While they shared similar views, the Separatist Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock were not the Nonconformist Puritans of northern New England. The Separatists believed in a complete break from the corrupt Church of England, whereas many Puritans felt that the Church could be salvaged, but the best way to do that was to take it and push it somewhere else. In the New World, they wouldn’t have to worry about bishops or kings or other religions. Out of sight, out of mind. Tensions between Separatists and Nonconformists would prove challenging to the City Upon a Hill because, in all fairness, the Puritan movement was not as unified as they or we would like to believe. When Roger Williams, a Separatist Puritan minister who served the Salem Town congregation in the 1630s, became too vocal in his criticism of the Church, specifically advocating for the separation of church and state and religious liberty for all, he was banished. He took this as an opportunity to start his own community south of Massachusetts, despite his assertion that the English had no inherent rights to indigenous lands. Okay, apparently, he did have a pretty good relationship with the Wampaonags and Narragansetts. But then again, I’m cynical, so Williams kinda feels like that white hipster who moves into a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, but, like, only shops at local bodegas and speaks some Spanish, so, like, he’s not part of the problem. Muy genial. He got in good with the Baptists there, and he eventually secured the royal charter that created Rhode Island, which would become a popular destination for folks banished by the Puritans. Williams would not be in short supply of neighbors.

In the late 30s, a spiritual crisis known as the Anti-nomian Crisis threatened to tear the Church apart. I might cover that particular scandal in a mini episode, but it basically boiled down to an incredibly heated religious debate over how one exactly achieves salvation and resulted in the excommunication and banishment of Anne Hutchinson, which I feel set a precedent for how the leaders of the colony felt about women who spoke too loudly and critically about the men in charge.

If we’ve learned anything so far in this series, it’s that the Puritans were not great at playing nice with others, so it should not come as a surprise that they did not take kindly to other religious groups in their New World. One of the most intolerant of the lot also happened to be the longest-serving governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony- John Endecott.

Endecott was one of the founders of the Colony, having been tasked with helping establish the settlement of Salem in the mid-1620s. He served as governor until 1630, with the arrival of John Winthrop, and then held that office again, on and off, between 1644 and 1664. He had also gotten himself into hot water previously for his decidedly Separatist views. He famously defaced an English flag because it depicted the Cross of St. George, and was therefore too Catholic for his taste. This guy catches a whiff of the papacy, and he mcfreakin loses it. Endecott had it out especially for two groups that were seen as a threat to the great Puritan experiment- the Baptists and the Quakers.

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The Quakers began preaching in the colony in the 1650s, to the horror of the Puritans. I imagine the Puritans viewed the Quakers like weird hippies mixed with cool Mormons. The alternate term for a Quaker is “Friend”. They’re just nice. But the Puritans thought they were too individualistic and loosey-goosey with the light of God, which was intolerable. Plus, they let women speak on religious matters, and we know how the Puritans felt about that. The first Quaker missionaries were swiftly imprisoned and banished, their books burned and property confiscated. Quakers were banned from the colony, and those who returned or were outspoken about their beliefs were often imprisoned, whipped, and banished under penalty of death. One evangelist had his right ear cut off for returning to Boston after his deportation. As governor, John Endecott oversaw the execution of four Quakers between 1659 and 1661, who are known as the Boston martyrs. One of them, Mary Dyer, had been a supporter of Anne Hutchinson before she converted to Quakerism. She had been sent to the gallows by Endecott for defying her banishment first in 1659, but she had been reprieved and banished again. She returned in 1660, and was hanged on the Boston Common on June 1st of that year. After the hanging of the martyrs, King Charles II explicitly forbade the Puritans from executing Quakers, though that didn’t stop them from being dicks, nor did it dissuade the Quakers from protest against the religious majority. In 1663, a Quaker woman named Lydia Wardwell walked into a Sabbath service in Newbury completely naked to show her indifference to what she felt to be a shallow faith. Another woman walked through Sabbath services in Boston in 1677 dressed in a sack and covered in ashes. God I love protest theater.

During the political upheaval in the colony in the 1680s, which I’ll be covering later, the crown of England instituted religious freedom for all Protestants in the colony. Quakers, Baptists, and Anglicans were now allowed to worship freely. For the Puritans, this was a waking nightmare. Because as we all know, you can’t give rights to marginalized groups without stealing rights from the moral majority. That’s just how it works.

The Puritans definitely didn’t need more religious sects running around, especially since their own numbers were starting to decrease. The second generation Puritans in New England were generally less zealous than their parents had been, and by the third generation, the church was getting nervous. The second generation still attended church and seemed just as devout as their parents, but fewer became full church members. Without that conversion, their children could not be baptized, which in turn set them up for likely damnation. Plus, a lack of saints meant a smaller pool for Church leadership. Enter the Halfway Covenant.

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I talked about the Halfway Covenant a bit in episode two. This was devised in 1662 as a more lax form of church membership wherein the baptized adult children of saints could become so-called “halfway members” by agreeing to abide by their church’s covenant, and thereby baptize their own children without a conversion experience. The move was controversial. Proponents believed it would be good for numbers and would allow the church’s authority to reach further, while opponents felt it was a slippery slope into letting just ANYBODY onto the same level as the saints. Since only land-owning male church members had the right to vote or hold office, many feared the Covenant could also allow for more suffrage, still male, and loosen the elect’s political control. Still, the Covenant was adopted by the majority of churches by the early 1700s. Of course, Samuel Parris had rejected it for the Salem Village congregation.

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You would think that with the Church being challenged by a more secular government and dwindling membership, the Puritans would be desperate to hold onto as many saints as possible by any means necessary. Namely, by not imprisoning and executing them for witchcraft. But, again, the folks in Salem miss the mark on a lot of things, so why not add attacking their own covenant to save the church to the list?

Which brings us to the pretrial of Martha Corey.

On March 21st, the Village meeting house was again packed with curious onlookers. Hathorne and Corwin were to serve as magistrates, with Samuel Parris tasked with taking notes, because of course he was. Deodat Lawson sat to the side like Dominick Dunne, ready to jot down notes for his book. The reverend of Salem Town led the gathered Villagers in a prayer before the proceedings. Then Martha Corey stood up, and requested to lead her own prayer. John Hathorne probably looked like he was short circuiting for a sec before telling her, no, she couldn’t, the men just prayed, and besides, she was probably a witch. But Martha, never one to be told what to do, just launched into a prayer anyway as the men in the meetinghouse must have looked to each other like, “Is this allowed?” She again prayed that the Lord open the eyes of the magistrates and for the truly guilty to be revealed. Martha’s a champion of passive-aggressive prayer.

The first bit of business surrounded Martha’s supposed foreknowledge of Edward Putnam and Ezekial Cheever’s visit to check out her clothes. Cheever shouted to Martha that she best not begin her testimony with a lie. So we’re off to a great start already. Hathorne demanded that Martha explain to the court how she knew they were coming for her. She responded that the men had told her that her clothes were mentioned. Cheever yelled that she was a liar. Helpful. Martha then claimed that her husband had mentioned it. Giles, of course, denied this. Helpful. Hathorne continued with his Hathorne thing of asking the same question over and over until Martha threw up her hands and said that nobody told her, but that she had guessed that was the reason. Which makes sense, bad gas travels fast in a small town, but by now, the magistrates had branded Martha a liar, and there was little she could do to shake that off.

The afflicted shouted that the Devil was whispering in Goody Corey’s ear. They also saw a man roasting on a spit next to Martha, and felt her spector pinching and clawing at them. When Hathorne demanded she confess her sins, Martha refused, saying that the court should not believe the girls, whom she called “distracted persons”. Hathorne countered that the afflicted were not distracted, but rather quite focused on the source of their torment. And they were watching her closely.

It’s during this examination that the afflicted become more choreographed in their fits. If Martha so much as bit her lip or turned her head, the afflicted would shriek in pain. They moved with her, if she slumped forward, their bodies contorted. If Martha shifted her feet, the afflicted stomped helplessly in time. When she moved her hands, they claimed to feel her squeezing them. The magistrates simply commanded Martha to keep still.

Bathsua Pope (the maternal aunt of Benjamin Franklin) doubled over in apparent pain, screaming that Goody Corey’s spector was ripping her bowels apart. In a horrible bit of slapstick, Mrs. Pope took off her scarf and attempted to hurl it at Martha. The scarf didn’t get much air, so Bathsua took off her shoe and chucked that instead, whacking Martha upside the head to the cheers of the afflicted.

They screamed they saw a yellow bird feed from her, and that her spector was presenting them with the Devil’s Book. The magistrates ordered that Martha’s hands be held by guards for the rest of her testimony, which greatly calmed the afflicted. So much for them being “distracted”, Hathorne reasoned.

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For her part, Martha continued to proclaim her innocence, crying that she was a Gospel woman, though as the questioning got more repetitive and accusatory and the cries of the afflicted grew louder, her answers became more desperate and confused. She twice laughed during her testimony, likely out of incredulity or frustration. This was, of course, seen as a mockery of the tortured souls before her. Several so-called “sober witnesses” had also come out of the woodwork to testify against Martha by calling her out on past confident declarations that she would open the eyes of the court or by voicing past suspicions that she was a witch. She couldn’t give the magistrates any satisfactory answers, and she knew it.

“When all are against me, what can I do?”

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There was nothing to be done. The court had seen enough to confidently declare Martha Corey a witch. The Village watched as a member of their elite, a woman who had declared herself a living saint, someone the Church had trusted as destined for salvation, was marched out of the meeting house by guards, to be thrown into the Salem dungeon as a criminal and a sinner.

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Their Puritan state was once again under attack. The forces of Satan were growing stronger by the day, and if the church elite could be infiltrated, no one was safe. If the plague of witchcraft continued to tear Salem Village apart, the rest of the City Upon a Hill could crumble with it.

[[MUSIC: “Our Names Engraved” by Blue Dot Sessions]]

Remarkable Providences was written, researched, and performed by me, Kate Devorak. It was produced by Dan Manning, and recorded by Chad Ellis. This episode features the voice of Chad Ellis. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions. Find us on Twitter @RemarkablePod, and everywhere else @RemarkableProvidences. For transcripts and links to everything, visit us at whisperforge.org/remarkableprovidences

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Thanks for listening, and remember, the devil’s in the details.