Why Cotton Mather And The Chaos He Helped Create Matters In Today's World
by Roger Roberts
America is a wonderful country with a history of religious freedom as one of its foundations. It is also a place where periods of intolerance and religious persecution have broken out more than once. Current and future generations would do well to educate themselves about the undercurrents of hatred and fear that fueled the Salem witch trial times in order to prevent them from bubbling to the surface again. <a href="http://billbenson.net/about.html">Cotton Mather</a>, a renowned Puritan minister of the era, helped create an atmosphere that resulted in the death and destruction of innocent men and women falsely accused of witchcraft.
He was a prolific writer as well, and one of his works, "Memorable Providences", was widely read at the time. In this work he chronicled his experience when he was asked to intervene in the family situation of a local mason. His children had suddenly become plagued with strange aches and pains and exhibited fits of crying and wailing in unison. The minister blamed their behavior on a washerwoman he considered a witch.
The Puritan culture and belief structure made many easy prey for those who preached the dangers of witchcraft, which they began to believe was all around them. Sermons were full of stories of the sin of impurity. It didn't matter whether the sin was an action or a mere thought. Both were equally evil.
In order to purge their villages of presumed witches, hundreds were rounded up and arrested. It was such an easy way to get rid of a pesky neighbor or a unpopular family member since almost anyone could be made to look suspicious. Without today's medical knowledge, the scourge of smallpox, that threatened the region at this time, was explained away as the work of these devil worshippers.
Household pets, especially cats, became known as familiars if it was believed their owners had turned them into accomplices. Hundreds of animals were put to death for this reason. Any kind of skin blemish could cause the villagers to accuse individuals of being possessed. They could be arrested and searched for something as common as freckles.
Eventually twenty people, mostly women, were put to death. Many others either died in jail, escaped, or were eventually pardoned. In one instance, an ex-minister, George Burroughs, who had been convicted and sentenced to hang, recited the Lord's Prayer on the scaffolding, which he shouldn't have been able to do if he was truly demon possessed. The crowd called for a stay in the execution, but Mather insisted that it go on.
It is interesting to note that all the women who confessed to being witches survived and those who refused to plead guilty were put to death. In later years, as accused survivors began to recant their guilty admissions, Mather had doubts about some of his actions. He attempted to minimize his involvement, but history remembers differently.
If we don't want history to repeat itself, we have to understand and learn from it. Today we see many signs of religious and racial intolerance that have begun to mirror the times of the Salem witch trials. What was wrong about the thinking and behavior then is just as wrong today.
When you are looking for information about <a href="http://billbenson.net/about.html">Cotton Mather</a>, pay a visit to our web pages online here. Additional details are available at http://billbenson.net/about.html now.
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