I dont have that problem because everyone has heard of the puritans. Puritans to anyone. If you type puritans into a Search Engine or mention it to people, this is what they imagine. We all read the Scarlet Letter and we think of puritans as people who liked to put people in the stocks and humiliate them publicly. We think of their religion as extreme and more like a cult, a harsh, unforgiving religion. And, of course, you cant it away from the witch trials. And hutchinson and the witch trials, those are the first things people think of. Our imagination runs away with us on that one. Why thisten wondered is. Why do that your urgent have such a negative reputation . I think there are two reasons. First of all, in the early 1800s, after the war of 1812, which most americans felt like we had one and we were feeling kind of stable and strong as a nation, there was a lot of looking back to the founding. To look back to the puritans. In the first half of the 19th century, there was a lot of writing about puritans, which was not very well informed by actual puritan records. Most of the things the puritans were praised for at that time are the things that have come down to us as their negative characteristics. That whenoincidence irish immigration first picked up to this country, people started writing about the wonderful protestant puritans, unlike those irish catholics, who are very religious, strict, and quiet living, unlike those boisterous catholic irish. Puritans never drank or danced or sang, unlike these people who dont belong here. There was a clear message. Even know this was uninformed by facts, it stuck and this is why people started using the adjective puritanical to describe all of the terrible things the puritans were. This has definitely stuck around for us today. This movie the witch came out this year. This is the young star of the movie. She said what she learned from the movie is that the puritans were all about oppression, theocracy, and tamping down your most basic human instinct. They were all withdrawn and conflicted. Is this really true question mark i think you can tell im going to say no its not. What is interesting is how wrong it is. In their own time, with the puritans were ridiculed for where their passion for life. They were passionate about every aspect of life. Part of lifeevery mattered because it was given to you by god and had to be made the most of as it was honored and recognize that this kind of gift. Weree thought they overemotional people, so the fact we have come down with this very different view of them almost makes you think it could not possibly have happened, but it did. I will reiterate what gale said. If you want to ask a question at any time, feel free. You do have to come up and use a microphone because they are recording it. Your questions are the most exciting part of the show, so come and ask at any time, but i will also take questions at the end. What im going to do tonight is talk about five myths that we cherish about the puritans that seem to say the puritans were against passion in life. I will focus on their view of love and sex because love and longing is the theme of partnerships. Are that they came to america to establish freedom of religion, they were actually persecuting and burning women as witches, they established a theocracy, and they hated sex. Myth number one, the puritans came to america to establish freedom of religion, but then denied it to everyone else. We have all heard the story and here it is summarized by a popular, if not very well read commentator on the puritans claims the men who settled 17thcentury massachusetts, from them came the first dark words about dark powers. No matter that they sailed to these shores in search of religious freedom. Once established, they pulled up the gangplank behind them. What really happened was the puritans came here so they could worship freely. Like to dothings we in america with our unique history is look back to see where our unique founding principles first took root in this country and we like to think they were there from as close to the beginning as we could and we like to think freedom of religion, religious tolerance was something that goes way back with us, but that is an 18thcentury concept that took many decades and a century of enlightenment writing in scotland to get into the public s consciousness. It was not a 17thcentury idea to have religious tolerance or freedom of religion as we understand it. What the puritans came here to do was to be able to practice their own religion freely, and england, as in all european countries, and europe was the world they knew, the monarch was the head of the church in the 1600s. After the protestant reformation, whatever religion the monarch held, whether he or she was catholic or some variety of protestant, that was the state religion. Anglicanism, the church of england was the state religion in england. The puritans wanted to reform, to purify the Anglican Church to get rid of what they saw as remaining catholic elements in it. , so theyvery unpopular could not worship the way they wanted to in england. The way they wanted to worship became illegal, so they came here to establish their own state with its own state religion. The idea that they would come to america and let anyone worship in any way, they would never have had that idea, first because it was not an idea in the common vernacular at that time, and next, it was crucially important they established a godly commonwealth where the one right way to worship god was the state religion. Go back and say why dont you offer freedom of religion to everyone else, they would say i dont know what you are talking about and its clear why we dont want to do that. Were trying to set up our own state with our own state religion. Thinknly when you 18thcentury beliefs that are in our constitution and declaration of independence existed in the 17th century that you can be disappointed to find that they arent. The groups that try to come into puritan massachusetts and were persecuted like the quakers did not want to coexist with congregationalism, which is a form of anglican worship that developed here. They wanted to displace that. Everyone who came in wanted their own religion to be the state religion, so no one was thinking about living together in different forms of worship at this time. I should talk for just a moment to say when i talk about puritan new england, im talking about a very brief time frame. The peer at since first came here in 1629. They went to salem, the bulk of the puritans, the big group that came with John Winthrop came the next year, and 1630. They came with a charter that allowed them to make their own join the cspan conversation like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. They came with a charter that allowed them to make their own laws. No other english colony have this. Kind of freedom. They not only made their own laws, they elected their own government officials. Everybody else in virginia had their own, had a governor sent by london. And their government was controlled by london. Puritans got away with not having that and they had a lot of freedom. In 1684, they lost that charter and they were given a british governor appointed by the king and a lot of british people who were not congregationalists came over and really the experiment that we call puritan massachusetts ended very quickly after that point. So, if you think of the puritan period you are really talking about 55 years. From 1630 to 1685. That is extremely brief. If you came over when you were 10 years old with john went up and you lived to be 65, you would have lived to see the beginning and the end of it. So, when i say all these things about the puritans, this is how it was for the puritans, im talking about a very short time period. So, some of the things i say anything, that is not true. If they stretch beyond the period im talking about, then they are not really talking about the same thing. So they did not sail in search of religious freedom. Nobody else thought they did. Its odd that we think they did. What with a passionate about . They were passionate about having the freedom to establish a True Religion. They were not passionate about religious tolerance because for them that idea did not really exist. Myth two. The witch myth. Puritans, would persecute women as witches because they thought witchcraft was real. Here is a quote from the get us for College History website that said that their protestant life and their fear of the devil made them an easy target for witch hysteria. The puritans strict way of living views fears and fantasies were the bases of Puritan Society which cap hysteria witchcraft hysteria. There are all sorts of problems with this. I think if you look back at their period, you cannot find a society on earth but did not believe witchcraft was real. There are plenty of places that believe witchcraft is real right now. So, this was not unique to the puritans. And if you look at europe inthe same time period, there you have a witchcraft hysteria. There you have got maybe 150 years of pretty vigorous witch hunting that were the result of the religious wars there. Yet, we focus on the puritans. All because of salem. If three ships had sunk in april 1915, we would not have remembered the titanic. There was one witchcraft hysteria in puritan new england and so we remember it. What is the truth . Yes, the puritans did believe witches were real. They believe that stanatan could make people sign away their souls. They did believe all that. Did they frequently believe that someone they knew, someone who lived next door to them, was a witch . No, they did not frequently believe that witchcraft was really happening among them. If you read the wonderful book entertaining satan by john demos. It is a great read. He went through every case that ever made it to court in puri tan massachusetts and new england for witchcraft. And what he shows is that there werent many of them is the maintain. Say that i file a complaint about witchcraft. What usually happens with b is that there was somebody who was kind of a misfit, someone who made demands on other people. When you read peoples stories, long stories about how they came to be accusing someone of a wtich. Itch, they tell it all. My neighbor was coming over, saying give my husband that job. I want to see the baby. Let me attend your sick mother. I want this or that. Give me food. Making demands till finally i said, no, im not going to do that for you. And this was so contrary to the puritan believe in fellowship. That is what john went to have talks about in the city on the hill section of his sermon, give all you have to all those with you. We are in this together. Always give. If im finally driven to the point where i say no, it is upsetting and so many people will say the minute i said no to him, i felt pain, i felt something was wrong which was the guilty conscious. But they often thought after a while, no, i think this person did this to me. Hes punishing me with witchcraft. If i think that is true, you think it would have gone right from that to being in court. No. I probably would suffer five or six of these incidents before i told someone else. I tell m my friends and we decide we will go to the church elder and he comes in he talks to the person in question. Ifh hes not satisfied we bring the minister in. Maybe we have a Committee Formed to go talk to this person and see what is going on. There was a lengthy process of vetting these cases. Nine times out of 10, they broke down. Nine times out of 10, the person who had been causing trouble with say, im sorry. And the person who is making the accusation was a,ould say, i do not think this is witchcraft heard i was just angry. It was hard to get a case in court. Once you did, you had to have at least two witnesses to the witchcraft. The court often sent it right back to the community. They would say, this is a problem we cannot solve. What do you want us to do . This is a problem youre having. You have to work it out in your community. Not really thinking it is witchcraft. If you could really be convicted of witchcraft, then about 1 3 of thwee time, you might be executed. So, the numbers that i get from john demos is in that 55 year period of puritan new england, there were 65 people who were actually tried for witchcraft. Out of population between 20000 and 30,000. 65 people, 39 were acquitted. 13 were executed. 13 in 55 years. You may be thinking that is not right because 19 people were executed in salem. Salem falling outside of our time period in 1692 is illustrative only when you know all the story i gave you of how unusual it was to have even one person convicted and executed for witchcraft. In salem, you had 19 . It was a clear anomaly. And that is why we remember it. Unfortunately, we think that it characterized the puritans in general. Yes, 19 people were executed in the space of almost two years. This was nothing compared to the witchcraft mania that went on in europe and in england. And one year between 1645 and 1646, one man who was witch finder assigned by the government had 230 women executed in one year. In one town. Somehow, though, whenever you read about witchcraft you are always reading about the puritans. And that is because what happened in salem was that whole system i just described to you completely broke down. Because when two girls said, i think we are being bewitched, they told their father whow was the minister in salem. And for many reasons, every big event has many many causes. As the minister in Salem Village, there had been a lot of bad blood between Salem Village and salem town. He decided not to do all those things of having. Conference with elders and meeting with the person repeatedly to get their side of the story he took it straight to the court. He was the minister can he demanded that it goes straight into the courts. That whole process of vetting wet out the window. Once people realize the process was out the window and you did not have to have witnesses any do not have to sit and tell what was going on, then the accusations began to fly. And things that never happened in puritan new england happened, like children testifying in court and children being able to accuse people in court of being witches of respective full members of the congregation being accused of witchcraft and put in jail the same day. Salem was so unusual that it really is the exception that proves the rule. Puritans were not very excited at all about executing people for witchcraft. You could even be convicted of it and not executed. So the reasons why things went so wrong in salem has fueled many many books. And you can take a look at a lot of them. There are about six strains of explanations that come together to explain why this thing would happen. But what we close by saying is yes, they were passionate about countering satan. Yes, they believed that witches were real, but they were not passionate about executing people. They really believed that only god gave life and god should take it away and they tried to be sparing with that. Anne hutchinson. The one person most people know about. But she was burneanned for being a feminist, woman with partner here we are at the u. S. History site. Saying her leadership position as a woman made her seem all the more dangerous to the puritan order. John winthrop cautions that women could do irreparable damage to their brands by pondering deep theological matters a view not uncommon for the day. Some people would say this about us. People in the 2000s, you would not believe the stuff they believed. Where to start, because this is a big one . Lets go through first of all, i have to hit the one about John Winthrop. He actually made the statement about a woman damaging her brain about and hopkins who was the wife of a connecticut colony governor in 1641, which is five years, three years after Anne Hutchinson was vanished. Banished. The whole point was to study theology. That is what the people were free to do. And 99 of the people there were there because that is what they wanted to do. Men and women. There were absolutely no strictures put on women about studying theology. Everybody had to be able to read so that you could read your bible. Women were taught to read and write. I cannot think of another place in the world where there was a law like it was in massachusetts. Studying theology was what you were there for. You would never caution that women should not do it. Women were allowed to have any kind of meetings they wanted to. The four main things you did is a puritan to discover gods will, read the bible, number one, go to sermons from a godly minister, get together in groups and talk about what you learned in those sermons and what you learned in the bible. These are the meetings they are talking about and prayer, private prayer. These are the four things. Your goal is discover whether or not you have received gods grace, what we would call salvation. You know the puritans believe in predestination, that eons before the universe was created, god decided the fate of every person who would ever live, whether they were saved or not. No one knows why. This was a popular calvinist believe. What you are trying to do is not gain salvation but to discover whether you had already received this salvation from god. So, hopefully while you are reading the bible and studying service and listening to sermons and talking to godly friends and praying, you will eventually get some kind of clear feeling that, yes, i am saved. This was the goal. Anne hodges and started out like this, she started out like any other puritan and boston. Her minister was john cotton who came to be the minister of first church. She went through all of this and she believes that she had received gods grace. Fine, thats good. But then she was reading at her bible at some point and she came across the verse in the new testament that jesus christ is come in the flesh. The more she came to believe that it meant that if you were a recipient of gods grace, jesus christ literally dwelt within you. Therefore, your actions were christs actions. You were christ incarnate. Therefore, youre not bound by earthly law. And youre not bound by anyones theology. This was clearly pretty offtrack from what securities believes and she started talking about this over to boston. Later when people are testifying, they said i heard her talking about this on the ship, and i knew it was wrong. This is what she starts to do at these meetings. She were not hold it she was not holding them to discuss the sermon. She mustve been externally charismatic person. And when she would stand in front of people and say, look, these four things we do, the sermons, you do not need them. If you are saved, god will tell you like you told me. God is telling me if other people are safe. He talks directly to me because i have christ sdwelling within me. Although this mightve been shocking at first, this could seem like a great thing to pur itan people who are spending the bulk of their time working and studying and praying and worrying about whether they have been saved. Maybe, sh