Persecution of Anne Hutchinson

Stephanie Ocko, in her article "Anne Hutchinson: 'A Verye Dangerous Woman,'" writes about the persecution of a leading female religious leader who died some 350 years ago. The reader might wonder whether the issues in Ocko's article are relevant, but in Charlene Spretnak's "The Christian Right's 'Holy War' Against Feminism," we quickly understand that the persecution of Hutchinson is indeed exceedingly relevant. The fearful hatred of any strong women by many male leaders---political, religious or otherwise---is as alive today as it was over three centuries ago. Although it is clear that Ocko is on Hutchinson's side in her dispute with her persecutors, she is fairly objective in presenting the facts of the story until the end, when she refers to the "ridiculous charges" against Hutchinson (Ocko 27). The charges against Hutchinson are, in fact, so preposterous that the words of her persecutors are enough to indict them as foolish men terrified of a strong female leader with a good argument based on love and with loyal followers.

Basically, Hutchinson argued that the saved in Christianity were those elevated not by works but by grace:

Those who would be saved, she said, were those in whom the Holy Spirit lived; this was signalled by a personal love of Christ and an inner light. The ministers of Boston, she said, preached too much that people could be saved only by "works," that is, by following the Scriptures and the Ten Commandments (Ocko 25).

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and if the standard of salvation was so elusive as to be based on the presence of an "inner light," then clearly these male leaders and their patriarchal hold on the community was in real trouble. If there is any doubt in the reader's mind with respect to the gender basis of the Winthrop contingent's opposition to Hutchinson, it should be entirely dispelled upon reading the following: Intending to prove that Anne's behavior was immoral, Winthrop described her meetings as "a thing not tolerable nor comely in the sight of God, nor fitting for your sex," and accused her of breaking the Fifth Commandment by not honoring her father and mother (in this case, the magistrates of the colony) (Ocko 26). Here we see the overriding patriarchal inclination of the male leaders at work. They see Hutchinson not as a mature adult with a sound argument they must reasonably and fairly address, but rather as an unruly child who must be admonished and punished. It is not long before suggestions of witchcraft are posed, specifically that a friend of Hutchinson, "notoriously infected" with her grace-based preachings, has "given birth to a monster" (Ocko 26). A woman is seen as a weak creature particularly vulnerable to the seduction of evil: "S

Category: History - P