The Trial of Anne Hutchinson

 The Trial of Anne Hutchinson

I have referred to the trial of Anne Hutchinson before, when writing about Anne Bradstreet. I have expressed feelings of sympathy for the Hutchinson family, forced to live outside the boundaries of early American settlements. I have also expressed sympathy for the indigenous people who killed the Hutchinsons, understanding that the settlers had come to take away their land and their lives. 

The transcript of the trial is fairly easily found. There is a PDF version that almost exactly matches the version published in Root of Bitterness, the groundbreaking second wave feminist historical anthology of women’s struggles for equality. There is an interesting point that this version does not name Simon Bradstreet at any point, though he speaks once in the transcript as published in The American Sisterhood, a similar second wave text. His contribution is minor, though his presence among the judges is significant. And so, the decision to include or to remove that line is also significant.

Two things particularly affect me when reading the transcript. The first is the number of times that Hutchinson asks her accusers to prove their accusations; and their absence of appropriate response. This is a show trial. We could be in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. The second is the nature of the accusations themselves, highlighting the nonsensical divisions upon which believers have based their atrocities throughout the centuries.

Many people have expressed surprise that so many Christians supported Trump during the horrible error that was his presidency. I am sure that similar horror will be expressed as the consequences of this January unfold. I can hear echoes of my mother’s claim that ‘They are not real Christians’. With apologies to my mother and other well-meaning and charitable people, I am afraid that they are. The barbarities of witch trials and inquisitions, of sectarian wars, of repression and brutal judgement, all on matters of pure unsubstantiated superstition; this is the nature of Christian theocracy. As we have emerged into the possibilities of science, and of secular ethics, we should be able to see the dangers of letting religious leaders have any secular power. For it is certain that they would plunge us back into the world of Anne Hutchinson, if they could.