History Final

A Woman’s Religion and Her Power to Change

Andrea Young

History 101 American History to 1877

Professor Beam

May 22, 2011

At a time when women were not permitted to step beyond their assigned roles, Anne Hutchinson, through her religious beliefs, helped mold the future of America; the controversy over her courageous acts has had a great influence on the civil liberties and religious toleration that Americans enjoy today. Hutchinson, born in London, 1591, grew up the daughter of a well-educated, non-conformist minister who believed, and publicly announced, that most of the clergy in the Church of England were not properly educated and trained in the Word, but had assumed their positions for political reasons. Her father was arrested multiple times for his “subversive” words of dissent, and following in his footsteps with an unruly tongue, Anne became “the mother of New England’s first and most serious theological schism,” according to Peter Gomes, and has been referred to, as inscribed on her memorial in Boston, a “courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration”.

In England, Hutchinson yearned for religious freedom from the Anglican Church of England. Having been homeschooled in the non-conformist religious environment that she was, she was encouraged to develop her own opinions and personal beliefs regarding religion. She came to admire and respect Reverend John Cotton, who according to Gomes was “a charismatic minister of St. Botolph’s in Boston, England,” and when Cotton moved with many of his parishioners to the new Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Hutchinson and her family followed, hoping to flourish in the Puritan commonwealth of New England. On the voyage, “she had talked freely, and with characteristic assurance, upon religious themes, and had produced something of a stir among the passengers,” says Professor Leland Chapman. In freely expressing her faith, Anne quickly realized that the oppressed had now become her...