"The Double Threat of Anne Hutchinson"

The General Court of the Massachusetts Bay colony sentenced Anne Hutchinson to banishment from the colony because they considered her a religious dissident. The charges against her were both vague and obscure. In reality, Mrs. Hutchinson represented a double threat for the government and the church of the colony. Her religious ideas challenged both the Puritan orthodoxy in New England, and the traditional role of women in Massachusetts' Puritan society.
Although the New England Puritans believed that men and women were spiritually equal, that does not imply that they believed they were equal in other means. Each member of the colony knew its role and its place in society. Wives, as the author says, "were expected to help with the supplement of their husbands' public activities."#
As mentioned before, women dynamically participated in religious activities in order to strengthen Puritanism in the colony. Nevertheless, they were not considered religious leaders; they just fol...