Up for Discussion-Unholy Wars

I had just finished writing Witch Hunt; Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials (Atheneum, forthcoming), when the September 11th terrorist attacks took place. For months I had been immersed in the testimonies of accused witches and their "afflicted" accusers, as well as modern studies that tried to make sense of their 17th-century beliefs. After the attacks, as I read day by day of opposing statements from Islamic extremists and defenders of the West, they reminded me of the world I had just finished studying and describing. One reason I had wanted to write about the trials was to render a more complex and sympathetic portrait of the Puritans, including their leaders such as Cotton and Increase Mather. Building a community around a shared faith is such an appealing ideal; I wanted to understand why that effort had such tragic consequences? That is not just a question about the early days of English settlement in North America; it is the central question we all face today. While it is crucial that we authors and publishers create, and you librarians acquire, more good books about Islam and the current world political situation, it is equally essential that we realize how much we can all gain from looking at our own history.

When the English gave the name Salem, or peace, to a place the Wampanougs called Naumkeag, and wrote down the covenant that was the foundation of their settlement, they actually had a dual vision in mind. They believed that a devout person could and indeed should prosper in this world. The Puritans hoped that coming to the New World would not only offer them the opportunity to practice their religion as they believed God demanded, but also to provide well for their families. And yet they were aware that economic issues could drive people apart. To prevent this they set fair prices in the community, so that no one could take advantage of his neighbor. Like many modern schools that believe having uniforms diminishes envy and conflict, they set rules about clothing, so that all those of a given social rank had to dress alike. It was up to the individual to succeed on his own abilities, but every action was undertaken as part of a larger community. It was this knife-edged balance between individual and community that was tested again and again throughout the 17th century, finally coming to a head in the witch trials. And it is that very conflict which we see in the headlines today.

Osama bin Laden told the world that "these events have split the whole world into two camps: the camp of belief and the camp of disbelief." The Reverend Samuel Parris said something very similar to his Salem Village (now Danvers) congregation in 1690. There was only one hope for individuals needing a sense of community: in the church they would be part of "one spiritual and mystical body." Outside of it, "no such oneness and entireness" could be found. Humanity was divided into two neat parts, according to Parris, the believers in the church, and everyone else outside. What possible relationship could there be between the two but war? As Parris explained the next summer, "Christ furnisheth the believer with skill, strength, courage, weapons, and all military accomplishments for victory. They are well appointed for war. And the reason is because the Lord Jesus sets them forth, furnishes them with all necessaries for battle. The Lord Jesus is the true believer's magazine [storehouse for ammunition]."

Parris was speaking of a spiritual war, but the martial imagery was meant to imply real combat if necessary. "A curse there is," he warned, "on such as shed not blood when they have a commission from God." Why was the minister so aggressive? War was in the air. Though the English had defeated the Wampanoug leader known as King Philip and his allies in bloody conflict in 1676, justifying massacres along the way by being on the side of God, they still feared attack. Rumor had it that the French Catholics, like modern clerics who support terror, inspired their Indian allies by telling them it was a good deed to murder the English.

For all of these threats, though, the deepest wellspring of Parris's embattled rhetoric was in Salem, and in himself. He saw the face of the enemy in the arrogance of his more successful neighbors. Salem, the covenant community, was splitting apart. Some people, especially merchants in and around the port area that was coming to be called Salem Town, were doing very well. Others, like the parishioners who supported Parris in the interior section of Salem Village, were farmers and were having a tougher time. Parris made very clear where he stood: "Now if we would not be devils, we must give ourselves wholly up to Christ, and not suffer the predominancy of one lust—and particularly that lust of covetousness …which so sorely prevails in these perilous times." The battle line was unmistakable—on one side greedy people turned into veritable devils by their hunger for wealth, on the other the community of saints. There was just one detail Parris left out: before he became a minister he was a merchant, engaged in the very same Caribbean trade he now condemned. It is just that he failed, and turned back in spite against the people whose ranks he had hoped to join.

Marina Budhos, author of Remix: Conversations with Immigrant Teenagers (Holt, 1999), has posed a question about the disaffected young men who became terrorists that directly relates to Parris and his sermons. Why didn't immigration ease their hostility toward the West, as it did for so many of their peers from India, China, Korea, and the Caribbean, who came here from societies that could not allow them to rise. The answer, as Andrew Sullivan argued in The New York Times Magazine on October 7, is that it became too threatening to them to admit they wanted to be part of a West in which they might not succeed, and which was so different from their homelands that they would have to choose one or the other. Like Parris, if a college graduate failed to gain entry to the luxuries, the benefits, the goods of the West, he might be very inclined to see those siren images as the incarnation of evil.

It is easy to condemn Parris, or the terrorists, for their hostility-born-of-envy, but choosing between the community you know—or those who promise to re-create that community, with all of its values and human bonds in tact—and the rootless individualism that characterizes so much of Western culture is not easy. Within our own society there are many who hunger for a more spiritually connected community and look to social and political means to foster such connections. In a sense the terrorists who acted in the name of faith force us to define how far we will go to create that community. That's what happened in 1692.

As the trials took place over that summer, the courtrooms functioned as the voice of the group, the majority. The side of the original Puritan vision that stressed the community over the individual was triumphant. "We, together, judge you to be a witch," said the shrill testimony of the ever-growing number of accusers, the stern admonitions of the judges, the eager responses of the audience. More and more people got the message, and readily confessed, "yes, it is true, I am a witch." Every time a person confessed it proved the crowd and the court were right, and more accusations followed. The stronger the force of the group, the more likely it was that the next person on trial would confess.

But then, starting in August, a new voice entered the trials. Some of the confessors recanted. They could not stand to lie, even if it would cost them their lives. Margaret Jacobs visited the cell of a man who would hang the next day, in part due to her testimony, and admitted she had done wrong. "I was in such horror of conscience that I could not sleep for fear the Devil should carry me away for telling such horrid lies." Then a jury hesitated and declared one of the accused witches innocent. Though they changed their minds again, clearly the mob voice was loosing its power to silence all opposition. In September, the accused witch Mary Easty urgently petitioned the court to separate the accusers, so that each of them would have to speak as an individual. The judges did not listen. Nor did they when, knowing she would die, she wrote to them one final time. Mary pleaded, "I petition to your honors not for my own life for I know I must die and my appointed time is set but…if it be possible no more innocent blood may be shed."

She was hanged on September 22. On October 3, Increase Mather, arguably the religious leader of Massachusetts, insisted that the trials should stop. "It were better," he wrote, "that ten suspected witches should escape, than that one innocent person should be condemned." No matter how compelling the vision of religious unity of a community joined in faith, no matter how dangerous the threat of the Devil himself, the individual must be protected. The trials were effectively over, and by the following spring even those who had been convicted and were still in jail, as well as all those who confessed, were released.

The Salem witch trials showed that even a religious community's best efforts to enforce group rules, and to combat the vilest evil, could turn into a "delusion of Satan." As a result of the revulsion that came after the trials, not one more person was convinced of being a witch in New England. More generally, the British colonies were on the path to the creation of a secular state with religious freedom for all, which came with the Revolution.

Now, that nation, the United States, seems to be at war with others whose view of the world is similar to that of Reverend Parris. We are fighting our own past. Perhaps that can help us to understand our enemies, and it offers the hope that truly devout people who oppose us will recognize that the choice is not between belief and disbelief, but between a belief that guides us to preserve life, and one that encourages us to destroy it.

The bin laden quote is from alan wolfes thoughtful New York Times Op-Ed, "The God of a Diverse People," 10/14/01; Reverend Parris's quotes are from Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum's Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Harvard University, 1976); testamonies from the trials are from The Salem Witchcraft Papers (Da Capo Press, 1977), edited by Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum.