When Satan Went Up To Salem (Part 1 of 3)
The horror began on October 16 of 1637. On that day, a woman named Mary Barrett Dyer had a baby girl who was born dead 2 months premature. The child was badly deformed and that was extremely dangerous for a mother in Puritan New England. Mary’s two midwives understood the danger. Such a child was considered a monster and rumor had it that monsters were born to women preachers or to women who had listened to women preachers. The midwives secretly buried the little one in an unmarked grave. A few months later, one of the midwives was tried for heresy because she had preached her Quaker faith to Puritans. Of course, the Puritans excommunicated her in a formal ceremony.
When she walked out of the meeting house where her sentence had been read, Mary Dyer walked with her, holding her hand in support. While all of this was going on, word got out that Mary had birthed a monster. In his zeal to further prosecute the midwife, Puritan Governor John Winthrop had that poor, tiny body exhumed. Then he wrote a vile, detailed description of the deformity and published it in a book. It is so evil that I refuse to share it with you. His purpose was to inform the world about all the heretics who had infected the holy Puritan community. In his despicable description, the man strongly implied that witchcraft had been involved in the tragic birth of this child.
Mary Dyer’s husband was well-connected and well-to-do so she was protected from further attack. But she and her family left Boston and moved to Rhode Island where there was freedom of worship. Sadly, that isn’t the end of the story for Mary Barrett Dyer. By 1660 she was middle-aged. She had become a Quaker and was a Bible teacher who felt a strong calling on her life. Mary believed that God wanted her to re-enter Puritan Boston and teach the Bible to the people there. Extremely risky, but she did it anyway. The Puritan officials warned Mary not to enter their city. But over and over she disobeyed them.
Finally, they arrested her, tried and convicted her, and on May 31 of 1660 they murdered her, hanging her on Boston commons. She is one of four Quakers executed by Puritans who are known as the Boston martyrs.
Today, there is a statue commemorating her bravery in the place where she was murdered. I love Mary. She is my 9th great grandmother and I am proud to be her direct descendant. The greatest horror was that she and many others in New England were murdered by people who claimed to be devout Christians. How did it come to this and how did Puritanism in New England open the door to great supernatural evil? How did they let Satan in? Most important of all, how does their experience relate to America right now?
To understand the spiritual aberration that Puritanism had become, a religion that could justify murder, we need to look back at how Christianity grew at its foundation. At the end of what is called the Apostolic period, 100 AD, when the last of Jesus’ apostles had died, the Christian church in Europe, the Near East and North Africa was very small. A major city of the Roman Empire might have a tiny group of Christians meeting in someone’s home. These people were considered just another sect of Judaism and everyone, including the Jews, didn’t like them. Government and religion were totally unified in ancient Rome. Every city had temples to the gods and held major festivals where all citizens were expected to participate.
But the Christians refused, which made them dangerous and unpatriotic. In many places they met almost in secret. While there were a few Christians working in government, most were simple folk. Artisans, owners of little shops, laborers, soldiers and many slaves, because slaves made up as much as 20 percent of the Roman population. When Jesus’ Apostles were alive, there had been missionary drives to take his message across the known world. But after those men were gone, such efforts mostly stopped.
Nevertheless, something unusual happened. Instead of dying out, during the next 100 years the number of Christians grew. By 200 AD scholars estimate that there were 250,000. Fifty years later, it was 1.17 million and the amazing growth continued. All of this during a time when followers of Jesus experienced periodic persecution and death. For centuries Rome had overflowed with all sorts of religions. Why did this one take such a powerful hold? What caused it to grow in spite of all the attacks against it?
Yale Professor of history, Ramsay MacMullen, asked himself those questions. To answer them, he did an exhaustive study. What he discovered he wrote into a book entitled, Christianizing the Roman Empire: 100-400 AD. Some of Dr. MacMullen’s conclusions are startling. Why did Christianity grow? One major reason was that hurting people searched out Christians. But why? Millions in the Roman Empire suffered from all kinds of diseases and there was little help to be found. There were the temples of Aesclepius where it was believed that the pagan deity, often in the form of a serpent, could heal you. But that could mean travelling long distances. Trips like that were expensive and just a bit creepy. To be healed, you had to sleep in the temple. While you were sleeping, the deified serpent might crawl on you. Hundreds of real serpents were kept under the temples and carefully protected as symbols of the god. What if your doctor kept a box of snakes in the examination room and he invited them to crawl on you? Physical suffering was immense, but spiritual suffering was just as bad. In the Empire, there were many who were tormented by evil spirits. I would imagine that getting such people to Aesclepius could be difficult. They had a tendency to fall into shrieking, raging fits and often exhibited terrifying physical strength. Demons didn’t seem to enjoy long trips. So when you were desperate, what could you do?
As the years passed, strange words of hope spread everywhere. “When you are sick or evil spirit possessed, find a little group of Christians. If you believe what they say, they will pray for you and you might be healed.” So desperate people did just that and, apparently, there were many healings. Also, those who suffered from supernatural oppression and possession were delivered. If you had experienced a miracle of healing, would you go back to the dead, powerless gods that you had worshipped? Dr. MacMullen concluded that this was a major reason Christianity grew for 200 years.
People in the early church knew how to deal with physical suffering and supernatural evil because they had experienced the power and love of Jesus Christ. That power and love continued and the church grew even through persecution. Then the Emperor Constantine issued his Edict of Toleration in 313 AD. What a relief that must have been from persecution. But then Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. The heart of the Christian faith, a heart for poor and suffering people, a heart that even persecution could not destroy, wealth and political power twisted until it was almost unrecognizable. Christianity was synchretized with pagan religion and government. Pagan rituals were adopted, renamed and turned into a pseudo Christian pastiche to make them acceptable to everyone. Pagan gods were replaced by an endless supply of dead saints. Churches reeking with wealth from the emperor took over pagan temples and, in the exact opposite of Jesus’ teaching, began persecuting those who had persecuted them.
The evil of wealth and political power did so much to corrupt the true message of Jesus. Ultimately, centuries later, it led to the Inquisition of 1478 where at least 600,000 people were murdered by fake, Satanized Christians. Over and over, the virus of wealth and power has brought spiritual death into the Christian church. So it is in America right now and syncretism is at the heart of it.
What is syncretism? It’s the attempt to join two irreconcilable ideas or philosophies, like trying to mix fire and water. At this moment, Christianity in America is almost entirely syncretized with money, celebrity and a thirst for political power. Social media reeks with hate and rage from people who claim to be patriotic American Christians. Millions justify their hate and rage by saying that America is a Christian nation built on Christian principles and they are simply defending what our founders created. But is that true? Is that simplistic idea accurate? Let’s go back to Boston commons where my great grandmother’s body is dangling from a rope.
One of the founding movements that helped established America was Puritanism. Over the course of its existence, Puritanism became the perfect syncretized Christian religion. From being a persecuted minority in England, it transformed into a religion that was totally married to wealth and power. That power was expressed in the ultimate joining of religion with government. Were there good and godly men and women among the Puritans? Yes there were. Some of their writings have come down to us as Christian classics of truth and devotion. Which makes what happened even more tragic. As in the days of Constantine, power and wealth destroyed their witness. But even deeper than that, their destruction was assured because their entire society was based on an evil delusion. When your leaders murder a woman for the sole reason that she wants to teach the Bible, Satan is in control. But the four Quakers were hardly the only victims. For years, the search for witches, their trials and their hangings consumed the Puritans in Massachusetts and Connecticut. All of it led to the ultimate Puritan disaster of the Salem Witch Trials, one of the greatest tragedies in the history of our country and one that did so much to influence the spiritual life of our nation.
I’ve done a lot of study about those trials. My primary focus here will be on the decades that preceded them, because that period paved the way for what happened. Many books have been written about the Salem trials. What I’m going to tell you is based on two sources that I consider to be the very best. The first is entitled, Narratives of the New England Witchcraft Cases. It was compiled and edited by noted historian, George Lincoln Burr. It gives first person, eye witness accounts of the great tragedy and the years preceding it.
My second source, is entitled Witchcraft at Salem, by historian Chadwick Hansen. Published in 1969 and now, sadly, out of print, it is well-documented while being the fairest and most realistic of all the histories. You can find it online here or click the cover below to purchase a used copy.
I contend that a founding delusion set the stage for the Salem trials and all the murders that preceded it.
As stated by Governor Winthrop in a famous speech given when he first established the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the goal of the Puritans in the New World was to be the perfect Christian community, totally unified, loving each other, depending on each other and obeying all of God’s rules. The theme was Micah 6:8. What does God require? That we do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with Him. The Puritans made a mockery of that command. Winthrop’s plan was a twisted delusion because it disobeyed a specific command of Jesus. In His Great Commission, He had told his followers to go into a lost and dying world and preach the Good News about Him, making disciples. That lost and dying world included the native tribes whom the Puritans chose to believe were not even fully human. Because of their pagan practices they viewed them as devil’s spawn. The hypocrisy of this is so profound that it’s insane.
Who were the ancient ancestors of the Puritans? The Celts, the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings, and others who, many centuries before, had also been pagans worshiping evil spirits. Their ancestors had sacrificed human beings to their gods. Yet at some point, long ago, unknown Christians had risked everything to bring the message of God’s love in Jesus, His Son, to the Puritan’s pagan ancestors. None of this mattered when they faced the native tribes. Tragically, God’s word in John 3:16 that He so loved the world that He had sent His Son didn’t apply to the people they feared and hated.
In their minds, Puritans were God’s elect, chosen to establish the New Jerusalem and anyone who stood in their way must be removed. This included tribes whose land they wanted, but also other Christians who did not agree with their theology and lost souls enslaved in sorcery. It didn’t matter that Jesus had specifically said His Kingdom was not of this world. It didn’t matter that He never told His followers to establish a nation in His Name. Here is a pattern that is at work in the world today. Because of their disobedience, from the very start, the Puritans of New England opened the door to great evil, including supernatural attacks by an enemy who trapped them into destroying themselves. Their syncretism of Christian theology with wealth and governmental power invited the Darkness in.
Imagine that you live in a woods in Massachusetts. It’s a winter night and very cold outside. But it’s cold inside too because the year is 1679 and there is no electricity. There are no lights that you can switch on. No heat except a fireplace. Of course, no flashlights in case of emergency. And there’s no one you can call if you need serious help. We who live in America in the 21st century have absolutely no understanding about such an existence. But even in our well lighted world, when there is a loud, strange noise in the middle of the night we awaken startled and afraid.
Puritan William Morse lived with his wife and grandson in an isolated area known as Newbury, Massachusetts about 40 miles north of Boston. In the 2020 census there were less than 7,000 people living in Newbury, so it was quite a bit smaller in 1679. On the night of December 3, William and his wife were startled awake by the sound of sticks and stones being thrown with great violence on their wood roof. Jumping from bed, William ran outside, but could see no cause for what they had heard. Puzzled and very disturbed, he locked the door and went back to bed. About midnight, they were awakened again, but not by stones. This time, they heard the loud, deep snorts of an animal inside their house. Jumping up and running into the hall, William found a monstrous hog staring at him. But the outer door was shut and locked. There was no way for it to have gotten inside. He opened the door and the creature ran out. I would imagine that William and his wife didn’t get a lot of sleep after that. This began weeks of terrifying manifestations and the family came under physical attack.
The story continues in Part Two
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