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Sherwood Callaway
HIS 141, Blog Post 4
In the colonies, the advent of evangelical Christendom can be plausibly linked to heightened paranoia regarding witches on the grounds of their common “experimental” nature.
Taylor juxtaposes evangelicalism with its conservative counterpart, rationalism. He describes the former as “cultivating a spontaneous, direct, and individual religious experience” (343). Plainly, evangelicalism embraced superstition to an almost unprecedented level, arguably rivaling the mystic spirituality of Medieval Christendom. Furthermore, evangelical Christians were extremely emotionally invested in their worship. Rationalism, on the other hand, “held that God created the natural universe and thereafter never interfered with its laws” (344). Rationalists “found guidance” in understanding the methods of science and order (344). They condemned evangelicals as “enthusiastic,” or fanatical—and not entirely without fair reason.
I have little evidence to support the following claim, but I found the prospect much too intriguing to ignore: Could the “experimental” nature of evangelicalism have contributed to the rationalization of witchcraft in colonial New England? I believe so.
Consider a few hard facts:
1) Evangelicalism emerged most prominently in the Congregational communities of New England. For example, the evangelical George Whitefield had little success in the southern colonies, “because most Anglicans distrusted his emotional preaching and ecumenical support… [and the south] also lacked the dense settlement and many printing presses” (348). In New England, however, these essential elements were present, and he achieved much larger audiences.
2) Norton writes in her essay Witchcraft in the Anglo-American Colonies that “the vast majority of known witchcraft cases arose in Massachusetts or Connecticut or developed among Puritan New Englanders.” Furthermore, to extend my tentative comparison of evangelicalism and medieval Christendom, she explains: “only New Englanders established the sorts of small, relatively self-contained communities that in Europe tended to generate witchcraft charges.” Norton suggests that these communities facilitated interaction between neighbors, which facilitated conflict between neighbors, which—when coupled with the unpredictable hardships of colonial life, and a pre-enlightenment worldview—likely escalated into accusations. Quite frankly, the farming societies in the Chesapeake and the Carolinas were not as conducive.
So it is clear that New England was more evangelical, and also more prone to witchcraft charges. But the question remains: was this relationship a correlation or causation? A partial causation, I would bet—contribution is probably a better word.
I’m interested to hear the perspectives of my fellow students on the issue.