Friday, August 30, 2024

*** This is a rough transcript of today’s show ***

It is the 30th of August 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Two days in a row, two strong women in the general evangelical mold helped Selena Hastings, yesterday’s figure, have wealth and influence that allowed her to continue to hire and hear preachers even after she left the Anglican Church.

Anne Hutchinson had no such wealth- although not poor- she was one of the early colonists who came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, leaving behind her former life. That her father had been convicted heretic may have made it easier to leave. She, too, would show an independent streak, certainly inherited from her father, who taught her to read the Bible at a young age.

Anne and her husband, Thomas Hutchinson, followed their minister, John Cotton, who had fled England under threat of imprisonment for his dissenting views (his descendant, Cotton Mather, will be named for him and his other grandfather, Richard Mather).

So what do we know of Anne, celebrated ever since as everything from a feminist icon to the “American Jezebel” portrayed by her fellow Puritans (and surprisingly generations of historians)?

She led a home Bible study where people came to discuss the previous Sunday’s sermon, among other things. This was not abnormal. What was particular was that it was extremely popular. Some men attended, which led to suspicion.

She was headstrong, and so were many of the women willing to make the trek to lands unknown across the ocean.

She was a midwife and an herbalist. These professions were super common, and nothing should be read about them.

She would come to wider attention with the so-called antinomian controversy. Here’s a church historian pro tip: if you see something about “antinomianism,” it probably is not. Anne and her fellow Christians and pastors believed they were saved by grace alone- but sometimes the Puritans had funny ways of truly “knowing” if one was really “elect.” Anne and others took offense at what they saw as legalism. They were labeled “antinomians” as if there was no “law” that could bind the actions of a Christian (virtually none hold this view- some, like Anne, believed the Spirit acted as a “new law” that superseded the Mosaic law).

She was accused of saying that some ministers taught a “covenant of works,” which was another way of saying she was calling the ministers anti-covenant of Grace. This was a particular sleight that made sense in their world of Reformed convent theology. It was determined that she probably didn’t, in fact, say this.

She was tried in 1637 in a civil court overseen by John Winthrop. Cotton and others came to her defense, and all was well until she took the stand and began to claim direct revelation from God. Perhaps she hadn’t learned of Joan of Arc. Being a strong-willed, popular, and vocal woman will cause problems, but say you are a prophet, and you will become a problem that can go away quickly. She would be convicted and banished on the 30th of August in 1637 but then held in prison while she underwent a second trial- this one by the church authorities. 

Her health was deteriorating, and even when she signed a confession, the authorities ruled that “her repentance is not in her countenance”. She and her family left for Roger William’s Rhode Island colony for religious dissenters. She would then move to New Amsterdam under religious protection from the Dutch.

In 1643, a native tribe raided Long Island Sound, where she lived with her family- in a case of mistaken identity or revenge, they were slaughtered. When news got back to Massachusetts, it was understood as divine judgment on Hutchinson and her family- some Puritans seem to have lacked a bedside manner.

The legacy of Anne Hutchinson as a feminist forebear or icon of religious freedom is reading a good bit of the future into the past. She was feisty. She spoke out and held a popular Bible study. When challenged, she claimed direct revelation, and everything spiraled from there with her banishment and death. But we do well to remember what a lack of religious tolerance can look like and wonder how we might like being a religious minority.

Anne Hutchinson and her family were banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony on this day in 1637 (in 1987, as a political ploy while running for president, Michael Dukakis, then governor of Massachusetts, pardoned her).

The last word for today is from the Gospel of John, the 10th chapter.

11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13 The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

14 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 30th of August 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who would have to have more kids to start resorting to naming them after textiles. He is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man thinking…. Chantilly, Lacey, Jean, Scarlett….textiles as names! I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.