Okay ladies and gentlemen, students, you guys.... Here is our first of our recorded powerpoint slides (not first anymore). Tonight, in my mind this is the witchcraft lecture and if I was in front of you, you would see my fabulous purple witch hat. But you can't see it. Anyway, the official title of the lecture as you can see there is Euro American women and Colonial Era: Community and Control. So we're going to be looking at colonial Euro-Americans. Last week we talked about indigenous Americans. This week we talk about when the white people from Europe who showed up in America and the main group that showed up in America is a group of religious dissenters called Puritans who came to New England-- who then engaged in this thing called witchcraft. Which if if you are a women's historian is super super interesting. So let's do that! The first thing we need to do is remind ourselves of "COVERTURE," which I think we've we've covered this a couple of times now, but just pretend that I'm in front of you and I say, "What is it, Wt is it?"And you say, "Well, Peg that's the legal principle where women are owned first by their husbands and then by their husband-- their-- uh their.... Sorry! First by their fathers and then second, by their husbands. Your Smerican culture was extremely patriarchal. The patriarchy explains the coveture, the coverture explains the patriarchy. Men ruled the households, men owned everything, including the women, men owned ran the courts men ran the governments, men ran the churches. So Puritans came to New England from England. They also went --you'll see there on the map (There's a skip here-- its no big deal.... just ignore it). You can see the pilgrims. This is the name you know them by, but nobody in history ever calls them that. Indeed if we were to go we would time travel and go back and we saw one of these people we said, "Look a pilgrim, look!" They were dressed in black, they had the black hat like I made in second grade, with construction paper ... they'd be like, "What, what? Where's a pilgrim?" Because a pilgrim is a person who makes a religious pilgrimage-- a journey-- like I'm gonna go to this religious shrine and and pay my dues to this particular saint or goddess and and then go home. So they didn't understand themselves as Pilgrims. It's a word because Americans are really bad at history and we got it wrong. So they understood themselves as Puritans by which they thought they meant they were pure and that they took a pure view of the Bible, and that they were purer than the established churches-- both the Church of England and way purer than the Catholics, who they hated like death. So anyway, they believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible... as it says there. So predestination is this fancy word that means you are predestined to either go to heaven or to hell. You are predestined to be either on God's team or Satan's team. Think of it this way... Imagine that you are in the birth canal and your mother is trying uh to push you out. So there you are stuck in your mother's vagin? Can you see it in your head? Oh, you're gonna have nightmares tonight! Well anyway, the notion was that God would take some of the babies and no matter whether you grew up to be a good person, what this meant ,was that you were predestined again for either God's team, going to heaven, or Satan's team, going to hell. How could you tell? Because religions like to sort people out? How could you tell? Well the notion was that you could probably tell, not for sure but probably tell that you were on God's team if you were doing well--If you had nice things, if you had you know a mercedes and a three-bedroom house with granite countertops, you're probably on God's team because God's a good dude, God's good to his peeps, man. But you had crappy sh**, you lived in Pomona on the wrong side of the track and you had a chain-link fence and a pit bull that bit the neighbors. And then you're probably on Satan's team because you had sh**. That is your works were bad. Now Protestants, particularly Puritans, believe that your works were both the stuff you could see-- your stuff, your stuff. And the stuff you did. But they really were deep believers in your stuff, so if you had good stuff, that is you were well to do, you were probably on God's team and if you had bad stuff it was because you were probably on Satan's team and God abjured you. Got that? Okay remember here, there's no choice. This is not a world of free will and choice. You are predestined at birth to go one place or the other and if you're asking yourself why would they work up a system like? That it seems terribly unfair... It was because they were trying to-- they were rejecting Catholicism and and they're rejecting the notion that you could pray your way into heaven, confess your way into heaven, buy masses to get yourself into heaven, light candles to get yourself into heaven. That is, they seem to think that was super really terrible corrupt. Now that's a system I kind of believe in even though I'm not a Catholic anymore. But they were trying to get around this notion that you could bribe your way into heaven so they come up with Predestination. Okay? Based on again this "Covenant of Works." (Okay, I'm going to re-record this because I just checked the slide and there was no sound for this slide). So Ann Hutchinson was a midwife, a wife and a mother and she was also a strong-- she had a strong theological education from her father. Her father believed in educating girls so and and he was a Puritan so the education she got was a theological, a Biblical education, a Bible scholarship not a not calculus and biology, right? She also when she wasn't being a wife a mother or a midwife. Oh and back up-- a midwife was like a first-tier healthcare provider --so not just a deliverer of babies, but a person you called when somebody was sick. Also anything you needed you ,would call a midwife. Doctors were rare and they could be dangerous, so you didn't call them--you called a midwife. And then she (Hutchinson) was a religious layperson-- which is kind of like um like a church lady who has Bible study in her house and so she would have Bible study in their house and she would teach the other women who didn't have as good of education as her about bible stuff and about particularly Puritan approaches to the Bible. So this is a lady who believed in Predestination-- she also believed in the Covenant of Works... That is you could kind of tell people where people were destined heaven or hell by by their stuff, their works. But in her work as a midwife she began to notice that she would go to rich people's houses, in spite of the fact that by all accounts they had good works and thus were probably NOT on Satan's team in an emergency, when babies were coming or people were really really sick, these people would be you know... douche bags. Mean. Assholes. Not godly. And on the other hand, sometimes she'd go to the houses of the poor, people who by all encounters had bad works and were probably, according to Puritan theology, on Satan's team, and she--it seemed like some of these people, not all of them ,but some of them acted in extremely Godly ways. So her theory was... well maybe it's not Works. Maybe you can't tell if people are going to heaven and hell by their stuff. Maybe the only way you can tell is with what we call, "Grace." See the Covenant of Grace? So works is all your stuff you can see-- you can see my house, my cars, my furniture, et cetera et cetera. What you cannot see is my State of Grace. That is, her notion about Grace and the Biblical notion of Grace is that Grace is an inside thing. A thing to do with your soul and your relationship to the divine, to God. And she said the only way you can tell if you're on God's team or Satan's team is by examining your conscience or your soul and seeing if you have God in your heart. And if you do then you probably are on his team and NOT going to hell. You are predestined for the good place and if you cannot find God in your soul you are probably predestined for the bad place. And you might think well that sounds a little bit like choice, because who would pick the bad place? Well to Puritans, who took this stuff really seriously, it wasn't choice. There were lots of people who spent their entire lives examining their conscience and couldn't find grace inside it and then died desperately worried they were going to hell. So this isn't about overturning Predestination, but rather this notion that you either had God's grace or you didn't and there wasn't much you could do about it. And as you might imagine a bunch of women and poor people who who didn't have good stuff ,who had didn't have a good Covenant of Works-- those people might like Grace because and then it meant it wasn't about your stuff. But you might also imagine that the Church Elders, who benefited from this (Cov. of Works) wouldn't have liked this. That they would have said, "Anne, you bad girl, stop it!" And you would be right. Probably the penultimate thing you could charge a person with, (the ultimate thing, that is the number one on the hit list of bad would be to be charged as a witch). They couldn't quite make that stick so instead they went for number two on the list which is Heresy-- crimes against God and God's word. And so what happens is the church elders had trouble trying her for heresy in part because she had this good theological education, remember? So she knows her Bible backwards and forwards, but so do they-- They're Church Elders and they take their Bible and their Puritanism super seriously. So they're essentially-- they were doing kind of a dueling Bible verses thing because there's stuff in the Bible to support Grace and there's stuff in the Bible to support works-- The great thing about the Bible, and for many people the frustrating thing about the Bible, is it's an immensely flexible document and I don't mean the Bible goes to yoga-- But rather I don't care what position or stance you want to take on a thing-- you can find stuff in the Bible for it. Want to be a racist, sexist, hater? There's stuff in the Bible for you. Want to be a a loving, diversity accepting perso? Sstuff in the Bible for you. Want to believe in the Covenant of Works? Stuff in the Bible for you. Want to believe in the Covenant of Grace? Stuff in the bible for you. So they're doing this dueling thing and really Anne had them [the church elders] kind of held to a tie, until one of them said, "And how did you figure out this stuff?" And she said, God told me. God. I talked to god. God told me about Grace." And they're like problem solved. Problem solved because-- and everybody knows this right?-- GOD DON'T TALK TO WOMEN! Ao anyone who'd say that is clearly a heretic. Bye-bye Anne. So the the the punishment for heresy is banishment. So she had to pick up and she had to leave the community immediately-- like the next day. It was the middle of the winter, her husband and children chose to go with her even though they were not banished. So they all packed up and they moved to Rhode Island ,but it's 1637 and times are tough out there. The town they moved to was attacked by Native Americans who had not yet been killed by disease-- Native Americans were like, "Hey you white people --go away!" They attack the town. kill all of the Hutchinson family except for one of the kids. So fundamentally Anne being a convicted of heresy because she believed in the Covenant of Grace caused the death of her entire family. That's the end of Part One of this lecture. (If you're getting them through web page AND EVEN IF You're NOT) This is the end of part one. Now just like it says there-- go to Part Two. We'll see about witches and it'll be fun! Yay! Okay, bye! you