Why is anne hutchinson significance

One of the most important women in religious freedom history is Anne Hutchinson. In , Hutchinson illuminated what it meant to be a rebel by partaking in a religious conflict in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Speaking out for what she believed in came at a cost. Her trial is famously cited by historians, and her pursuit of genuine freedom of conscience makes her legacy all the more iconic. Because of her dissent, Hutchinson was put on trial and charged with contempt and sedition. Anne Hutchinson arrived in Boston harbor in September of John Cotton greeted her on the pier and led the Hutchinson family up the dock to their new home.

Six weeks later Anne was accepted for full membership in the Boston church. Religion was everything in a Puritan community. The Bible was often the only book in a home. Scripture was read and studied on a daily basis. Church services were long and frequent.

Events that today would be explained by science, luck, or coincidence were explained in Biblical terms. Services were held in spare meetinghouses without altars or statuary. There was no singing or formal liturgy. No Christmas or wedding celebrations, no carnivals or sacred places. It was all rather severe. It was all that was left them. Women could not be ministers, could not vote on church matters, and could not even talk in church.

They entered the church meetinghouse through a separate door and sat together on a separate side of the building. Her meetings grew in popularity. She added a second weekly session to accommodate all the women who wanted to hear her wisdom. Hutchinson began to raise eyebrows in the colony when word leaked that in her study groups she had questioned the Biblical interpretations of local ministers in their sermons. In particular, Anne took issue with ministers who suggested that people need to display their faith, perform good deeds, and act as a decent Puritan should in order to show that they have been saved.

The Puritan ministers undoubtedly saw a problem with the suggestion that people could sit idly by and expect salvation—it was all too easy and might discourage rule-following and even, God forbid, skipping church services. The crisis deepened in when Hutchinson, upset with a sermon being delivered by John Wilson, a minister hand-picked by Governor Winthrop to replace a minister favored by Anne, stood up and walked out of the meetinghouse. A number of other women followed her out.

For Hutchinson, things turned toward the better. Her political supporter, Henry Vane, was elected governor, replacing John Winthrop. And she soon found a new minister who shared her theological views. John Wheelwright arrived from England in May , and began preaching in Boston the next month.

Anne Hutchinson was called to a meeting in December She faced a panel of seven ministers who demanded to know her views on the Scripture and on their own preaching.

Two and a half months later, ministers meeting in Cambridge for a Synod identified 82 errors held by Hutchinson that had been recorded in their meeting with her. Winthrop succeeded in dispatching Reverend Wheelwright to Mount Wollaston, where he could cause less harm. In the eyes of Massachusetts governor John Winthrop , such a teaching undermined the authority of church teachers and was a sign of antinomianism, or opposition to all law.

She had a keen mind, and historians generally agree that she bettered her accusers on the first two charges with Winthrop appealing to his authority as a man rather than to the superiority of his arguments , but she effectively affirmed the latter charge by claiming that she had received direct revelations from God.

Such revelations called the authority and necessity of the church into question, and Hutchinson and about sixty followers were exiled to Rhode Island. In time, she and a number of family members moved to New York, where they were killed by Native Americans. He is co-editor of the Encyclopedia of the First Amendment. Anne Hutchinson ca.

Edited by Debra Michals, PhD Works Cited. Breslaw, Elaine G. History in Context. Accessed February 1, Gomes, Peter. November-December Sonia Benson, Daniel E. Brannen, Jr. Detroit: UXL, Weatherford, Doris. New York: Macmillan General Reference, How to Cite this page.