Puritans' Witches Still Walk the Earth

In 1692 the Massachusetts Bay Colony was an isolated but growing Puritan community in the North American wilderness. Puritan doctrine stressed that all things rested in God's hands. The Puritans attributed almost all earthly occurrences to the mystical powers of God or Satan. “God showed his will in the events of the material world – in the veiled form of storms, martial wins and losses, miraculous cures, and so on…” (Lauter 495). In the same way, Satan “influenced the outcome of earthly events, often through his demonic minions: fallen angels, witches, heretics, and ‘heathens’” (Lauter 495).
Between June and September of 1692 in Salem, Massacusettes, approximately twenty men and women were convicted of witchcraft and hung. Another man was crushed to death under heavy stones for refusing to submit to a trial on witchcraft charges. Hundreds of others faced accusations of witchcraft. Dozens languished in jail for mon...