39: The Salem Witch Trials with Ken Minkema

Hosts: Brandon Nappi and Hannah Black

Guest: Ken Minkema

Production: Goodchild Media

Instagram: @theleadersway.podcast 

berkeleydivinity.yale.edu/podcast

H:    Hey, Brandon.

B:    Hey, Hannah.

H:    How’s it going?

B:    It’s going great. We are back here at Yale Studios Yeah. With pumpkins a blazing.

H:    Happy October.

B:    Happy October.

H:    I need to tell you, this is unrelated to this recording that we’re doing. But my plans for this evening are to go to Chili’s with my friends
in order to consume their seasonal cocktail, The Witch’s Brew.

B:    Wow.

H:    And then go home and watch the new episode of Agatha All Along, the Marvel show that, yeah.

B:    I’m impressed by your autumnal ambitions. A little different for me.
My goals today were to put on a turtleneck … And a fall themed sweater.

H:    Achieved.

B:    So we’re done now for the day.

H:    Okay, okay. Great.

B:    So, I have to admit, I had a certain excitement Mhmm. For the first ever Halloween Leaders Way podcast.

H:    Or maybe the second. Last year, we had the devil.

B:    Okay. You’re right.

H:    But we didn’t have a fun theme song last year.

B:    And we weren’t together for that one. I think you flew solo.

H:    True. True.

B:    So, so I was feeling really excited.

H:    Yeah. Festive.

B:    I hope the theme music was exciting for folks, special Halloween theme. And then I started to revisit our topic in hand and got, brokenhearted, I think.

H:    It’s grim.

B:    It is grim Yeah. What we have done in the name of the gospel. 
H:    Yeah. I mean, I am feeling myself having a strong preference slash temptation to just stay in, like, fun music and dress up land and not mentally go there.  

B:    There I go. I rushed to the darkest place.

H:    No. No. No.  You, you’ve centered me.

B:    There are those of us in this world who instinctually just run to the darkest place. And there’s, I mean, there’s a kind of ministry there. And then there are others of us who sort of stand in the light and shine in the light.

H:    I don’t know if purple and green witch costumes is actually the light. It’s just deflection.

B:    Okay. So let’s stay in the light before we go to the dark. I wanna know Sure. About your most favorite fun Halloween costume.

H:    Oh. Oh. Oh. I have an immediate answer and … Okay. I was probably in 4th grade when I decided to dress up as a refrigerator. This was made out of those, like, plasticky election signs that go on your lawn. Just the white sides. Yeah. Yeah. And then it had a door that opened and a bag for candy inside. And then that year for school, we were going around collecting donations for UNICEF as well as collecting candy.

B:    Oh, of course. I remember. We had those little boxes from school.

H:    So the box sat on top of the refrigerator right here. And that was a strange decision that little Hannah made. Let’s be a refrigerator.

B:    That’s strong, though. I like it. And the functional door?

H:    Functional door.

B:    Well done.

H:    I am nothing if not creative. It’s just … Yeah. Yeah. We wanna rein that in sometimes.

B:    Life goals.

H:    I’m gonna need your answer now that I’ve just revealed to the world…

B:    It actually is, it’s similar to yours in a different font, as my children might say.

H:    I’m excited.

B:    So I went as a robot. When I was about 8 years old. So you can think very cubical. Yeah.

H:    Boxy.

B:    So, yes, I got lots of boxes, which was actually difficult to do in the day. Right? So real really before Amazon …

H:    Well, I have questions about where the materials for mine actually came from.

B:    Oh, do you think there was some theft of campaign signs, which is a federal offense, I’m pretty sure.

H:    We’re not gonna think too hard about it.

B:    Looking at the door—are the feds coming?

H:    Enemy signs or ?

B:    Right. Which signs? So I went to the kitchen appliance store. I may have even had a refrigerator box. And so there were several boxes that I taped together, glued together. The problem with this, how I thought that this looked like a robot. Right? I didn’t have a very advanced imagination for what robots would be in in the future, but the problem with this was that with such rigid boxes strapped to my body, I couldn’t walk. I certainly couldn’t walk up steps, and I had a very kinda hilly neighborhood.

H:    Oh my god.

B:    And so this is pathetic. My mother had to go to the door and say trick or treat while I waved from the street because I literally couldn’t make it to the door.

H:    Could you move your elbow a little bit at least?

B:    Yeah. There was there was some of that. Wow. I know. And actually, it worked because they took pity on me and gave me more candy. Okay. Okay.

H:    I think we should scrounge up photo evidence of these tales for the podcast Instagram.

B:    Yeah. They’ve been destroyed.

H;    I might be willing to share. I’m sure I could find a photo of the refrigerator. Mostly for me, it was like …

B:    I would love to see that.

H:    Repurposed dance costumes, you know. Oh, when in doubt, she’s a ballerina again.

B:    We will need a dance episode of the Leaders Way podcast, and we’ll just call it perichoresis.

H:    `Woah. Yeah.

B:     Woah. Yeah.

H:    And we’ll talk about Dante a lot.

B:    And we’ll talk about Dante. Okay. It’s a plan.

H:    So I have a fun fact about Salem, Massachusetts, where we are traveling to in our imaginations today.

B:    It’s a fun thing. It’s a great place. Right?

H:    Well, I’ve never actually been. We have been to Old Wethersfield with Bishop Jeff, but I’ve never been to Salem. So that’s now on my docket. But I realized, studying up for this episode, that Salem is actually just a, like, transliteration of shalom. Had no idea. I always associated Salem with, like, you know, witchy stuff, but actually, it’s just the town of Shalom.

B:    It’s one of the great ironies. Right? That a town called Peace is tied to such a violent history.

H:    But also it just makes sense.

B:    It makes sense. Yes.

H:    Mhmm. A place that’s so committed to the bible strain.

B:    Yeah. I’m really fascinated by this by this time of history. Right? So we’re talking about the late 17th century. So, get in the time machine with us and come, you know, to this little …

H:    If this were like a little kids dance class, we would be in, you know, with our feet together and our knees apart and flapping our butterfly wings. Where are we gonna go today?

B:    We’re flapping, and suddenly, we’re seeing Puritan hats and bonnets and long skirts and …

H:    Hearing Aubrey Plaza cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West.

B:    There’s livestock around.

H:    Come with us.

B:    And the threat, and the threat of witches.

H:    Of demonic forces.

B:    Right. So, you know, for me, I’m really thankful for this conversation because it went from a kind of cartoonish caricature to a real sense that, well, on the one hand, people were really scared. And that fear leads people to do some really inhumane, violent things. And that’s sort of my takeaway. This is like what I wanna bring with me. What is it in our lives, collectively, in my life that instills such fear that I do things to betray my own conscience.

H:    Yeah. I think it’s also grasping for control. And not even control, like, I want power, but control, like, I want the ducks to be in a row. And seeking to control by othering people, such that you don’t have to think of them as the same amount of human as yourself, and then you can do violence. That’s– that’s the recipe for disaster.
    But let me introduce us to our guest for today, Dr. Kenneth Minkema. Our friend Ken, is the executive editor of the works of Jonathan Edwards and of the Jonathan Edwards Center and Online Archive at Yale University. He is research faculty at Yale Divinity School and my research boss. I work with him over at the Jonathan Edwards Center to transcribe some Esther Edwards manuscripts.

B:    I mean, this is one of the preeminent Puritan Jonathan Edwards scholars on the planet.

H:    He’s the guy.

B:    Humble as can be. This is a really illuminating conversation.

H:    Let’s get into it.

B:    Hi. I’m Brandon Nappi.

H:    Hi. I’m Hannah Black, and we’re your hosts on the Leaders Way podcast.

B:    A Yale podcast empowering leaders, cultivating spirituality, and exploring theology.

H:    This podcast is brought to you by Berkeley Divinity School, The Episcopal Seminary at Yale.

H:    Well, welcome.

Dr. Kenneth Minkema: Thank you very much for– Thank you for inviting me.
It’s very nice to be here.

H:    So to start us off, I wanna kind of capture the big picture. So in doing my homework from your syllabus of your witch hunting course, I learned that, generally, a witch was understood to be a supernatural occult or–sorry, a person with supernatural occult or mysterious power to cause misfortune or injury to others. And then in the early modern period in Europe, it became a person who exercised maleficent magical power by making a pact with the devil. And this is where we start to get these imaginings of nocturnal assemblies, sacrificing and eating infants, promiscuous sex, mocking Christianity, and in that packaging of what witches are up to, there … there are felonies and spiritual crimes that need to be tried and punished and etcetera, etcetera.
    So then we’re in New England. We’re not too far from Salem. And in fact, Brandon and I just realized that we very recently had lunch in, what’s the name of the town?

B:    In Old Weathersfield. Right.

H:    Right? Where there was a … where there is a witch history. So to kind of bring it home to New England, can you start us off by painting us a broad brush story of what we’re talking about when we’re talking about the witch trials here in New England?

Minkema:    So they actually start well before Salem, and they start elsewhere. They are in Connecticut, actually, to some extent, no small extent. So you start seeing accusations as early as the 1640s, if I’m not mistaken about that. It may be even earlier, and you see executions as well. So what happens at Salem is certainly by no means an isolated thing. What makes it stand out is the number of people who come under suspicion who are arraigned and arrested and eventually executed. We hadn’t seen that before to that extent.

But, yes, places like Wethersfield and elsewhere had a history of witchcraft accusations. Places like Northampton, Massachusetts and so forth had these. And, it was part of that religious culture of the time, that reformed Puritan pietistic religious culture that they brought over and adapted to this area.

B:    Can you remind us who the the Puritans are exactly for folks who might not have studied this part of history, maybe since high school, I suspect, some of our our listeners as clergy …

H:    We’re thinking back to The Crucible.

B:    We’re thinking back to The Crucible, but even some of our clergy, it’s been a long time since seminary studying Jonathan Edwards and and Puritans. And so can you sketch out maybe some core, convictions that Puritans would have had distinct from from the religious landscape in the in the colonies?

M:    Of course, we all know the Mankins’ definition of them is, you know, Puritanism is the haunting suspicion that someone somewhere may be happy. But hopefully, we can move a little bit beyond that.

H:    A little bit beyond that. Slightly.

M:    And so the Puritans were part of the reformational impulse to, as the name implies, to purify or further reform the church, in their case, the Church of England. And, you know, they felt that the Reformation hadn’t gone far enough. And so in their, in their polity, in their ecclesiology, and in their kind of view of the spiritual life, they sought this further reform by applying pietistic principles to themselves, to their communities, to their churches, and ultimately to their corporate life as well. And, it’s very much based on, a federal theology, a covenantal theology, so it’s an interwoven and kind of gradated series of covenants that bind individual church and people together in this endeavor. And it’s charged very much by a millennial, even apocalyptic kind of impulse. Here in New Haven, we know all about, the the nine squares and what that’s all about, do we?

H:    Tell us. Tell us.

M:    Do you know? I mean, New Haven is a great example of early 17th century, religious civic planning, And the 9 squares is supposed to replicate, writ small, the dimensions of the New Jerusalem as defined– as described in the Bible, in I believe Ezekiel and Revelation and elsewhere. So they’re literally trying to bring heaven to earth here, and they see themselves as part of this kind of Neo-Calvinist experiment as agents in the ushering in of the millennium, and in the advancement of sacred time. You know?  So they had some pretty vaunted self-identity going on here.

H:    Yeah. It’s also a lot of pressure to put on yourself.

M:    And it’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself. And that plays out in views of polity and of government and of discipline, right? And so, part of that is, you know, admonition and reproof and church watch and discipline.
So the congregational polity called for the disciplining of members, not just the enrichment of members and the sacramental and the preaching and so forth, but also by that, in– within each congregation is vested disciplinary powers, right? And so that can play out differently, across the spectrum of congregational principles that manifested back then. And that can be both beneficial, but it can also be very dangerous. Right? There’s … it’s fraught with a lot of, you know, potential there for abuse, unfortunately.

H:    Yeah. Yeah.

M:    And so you see that in part with maleficent practices or supposedly maleficent or perceived evil practices. And, you know, unfortunately, accusations of witchcraft were often used and abused for various reasons and petty reasons, you know, if you have a a beef against your neighbor, you know, “She’s a witch.” You know, that is was not uncommon, to do that, and you see some of that in Salem as well later on.

H:    So before we dive in further, I know you’ve mentioned you’ve had casts of characters sign up for this class on witch hunting, and we were talking before we started rolling about this popular imagination of witches and getting dressed up. And, of course, we’re recording this in October. There’s a new show about witches that a lot of people are watching. Why the fascination, and what kinds of people have shown up in your classes with what kinds of motivations to learn more?

M:    Yeah. There’s been an interesting variety. There have been some, Wiccans who have come, you know, goddess worshipers, and so forth. But I think mostly they are students coming with a lot of questions about this because of all of the, I don’t know, the accretions of popular culture that have been heaped on issues around witchcraft and witch hunting with things like, you know, The Crucible and … and you know, the kind of the cultural significance, of witch hunts and communist hunts and … And so forth, and other people claiming to be the victims of witch hunts even today. We don’t have to name who that is.
    And so there’s been quite an interesting variety. And one thing I try to do in the course is to bring kind of historical presence, and show the nuances. Not only just the development of the concept of the witch, but also how that has manifested and some of these abuses that we’ve mentioned that have gone on and how, you know, Salem was just a travesty in the end.

B:    What do you think we most often get wrong in the retelling of these stories? I mean, there’s the Arthur Miller version, which I think for so many Americans is the version. There’s various documentaries. There’s movies. What’s important to you as you teach, to highlight in this story?

M:    First of all, is the belief structure that made witchcraft accusations possible. You know, we’ve talked about how sometimes these accusations could be foibles. It could be –or foils. They could be tools. But we also have to recognize that the reality of witchcraft was seen as part of that belief structure. And the devil was real, a physical and incredibly potent force.
Right? And as were his … as were the minions, you know, the devils and demons and so forth. And so they, you know, they perceived of reality as this kind of ongoing struggle between cosmic forces of good and evil. That harks back to the millennial and apocalyptic piece that we were talking about. And, they were intent on kind of living that out.
    So the religious culture for me, first of all, is very important. But, you know, for Salem, what I try to especially get across is that in the end, there was no real evidence that any of these people were practicing any form of witchcraft except maybe beyond normal herbal, what they call theurgic practices, which would be medicinal, and so forth. And these were ancient practices, so there’s nothing there. The preponderance of spectral evidence that was admitted—and sometimes only spectral evidence. You know, if one of the accusers says, I see there’s a bird up in the rafters, and that’s so-and-so’s manifestation or familiar or something like that. And that was enough. You know? 
    So I do try to get across that many of the individuals, if not all of them, were entirely innocent of this crime. And so what you have here is a case of, you know, judicial abuse and in the end, judicial murder. Pure and simple. You know, that’s what it is. And so, you know, I lay a lot of blame on the constabulary and on the judges, on the magistrates, for the way this was done. 
    Now there are mitigating circumstances. You know, the Massachusetts based, charter had been revoked, so they were in kind of this legal limbo. There was no governor at the time. You know, there were there were conflicts with the Native Americans to the north. And so there was there was a lot of uncertainty and a lot of instability going on. People didn’t know what was going to be happening. And so that kinda contributes, right, to the fear and “Why is this all happening to us” and they have to find someone to blame. Like, you know, of course, all immigrants are to blame for America’s problems today, you know, just like back then, so it must be witches and the devil is at work, right, and so on. So, those are a couple of the things. There are there are, of course, others, but those are a couple of things I try to get across.

H:    If you’re enjoying the Leaders Way podcast, you might like to join us in person as a Leaders Way fellow. The Leaders Way Yale Certificate program combines the best of seminary, retreat, and pilgrimage. Fellows meet in person at Yale for a week in June, then continue their learning in mentor groups online. To learn more, visit our website.

B:    You might also like to join us for one of our upcoming online courses or workshops. Our learning space is hopeful, courageous, and imaginative. This year’s offerings include courses and workshops on prayer, preaching, conflict management, and more. Clergy and lay leaders from every country, denomination, and seminary background are warmly welcome to join us for all of our programs. Now back to the show.

H:    So my husband, Griffin, who both of you know took a class. I bet he has a whopper of a question. He does. I wouldn’t say it’s a whopper of a question. He said to me his one takeaway from your peers in class that had one week about the witch hunts was that there were no witches, only bad reverends. And he wanted to know, is this the correct takeaway? Is that something that’s true?

M:    That might be a bit too …

H:    Nice and flashy.

M:    I’ll give a shout out to Griff. That’s nice of you to ask that question. But that might be a bit too, you know, a bit too either/or. I would have to say that it wasn’t entirely bad reverends. There were certainly many lay people who were forefront, at the forefront of …

H:    And it sounds like the justice and governing system.

M:    Yeah. And there were actually ministers who were trying to stop it.

H:    Mm-mm. Oh, interesting.

M:    Yes, there was, you know, shortly after the accusations in Salem start, there is the testimony of Boston ministers that comes out. It’s signed by the prominent Reverends and including the Mathers. And, you know, they’re warning against things like just allowing spectral evidence and, you know, examining–how are you examining the act of the accusers and so forth, while at the same time saying that they do believe in the reality of them and of witches. And of which … so they’re kinda talking out of both sides of their mouths like this. But, you know, again, they’re part of that religious culture as well, and they certainly believed in that. But they also saw the potential of mistakes being made, and so they were trying to warn them.
    Other ministers were just like out and out, let’s go for it, man. Let’s find them all. Let’s kill them all.

H:    Oh, my goodness.

M:    Oh, yeah. Yeah. Including the minister of the town– or of Salem Village. You know? So …

H:    Well, yeah. Something that struck me as I was kind of reading very in a cursory manner through some of the transcripts of trials is that the people being accused aren’t saying, Oh, nothing’s happening. They’re saying things like, “A black dog approached me. It was the devil that asked me to join him, and I said no,” which is totally different from saying “Nothing’s going on here. Leave me alone.”

M:    Yeah. Yeah. That’s, again, part of that religious imaginary that was so prominent that they read, you know, they read signs and, you know, tokens in everything around them. They invested all of reality with religious significance. And sometimes that could possibly lead to, you know, mistakes, shall we say, or misperceptions.

B:    I noticed in myself this week as I was preparing and reading and watching some documentaries, this kind of shift in my mind from a kind of cartoonish perception of this story, which maybe dates back from my high school days to just absolute heartbreak for many people who suffered deeply, who were imprisoned, who were killed. And I wonder about the end of the story. I’m thinking about some of the young girls who had some kind of frenzy, seizure-like, what must have seemed very real to them, experiences. And I wonder, did their story shift and evolve over time? When they became adults, did they reflect back on what they experienced and share? Was there any new light that was shed over time?

M;    Yeah. Yeah. So, it starts … we were talking about bad reverends. It starts in the Paris family with, Paris’ daughter, Betty, and their niece, Abigail Williams. They start to build kind of a coterie of accusers. And there’s been all sorts of interpretations about these accusers. How are they how are they coordinating, concerting themselves and, you know, coming up with the same things, that they’re trying to outdo each other in their persecutions and things like this. And they’re working to ensure that no one no one dissents. Right? Once you’re –once you’re a part of that, you can’t. Because if you did, anybody who did…

H:    The whole thing …

M:    The whole thing would collapse.  Anybody who did they then accused that person of also being … which so it was a lot of kind of a gangster mentality if that’s an outlet. That’s one interpretation that’s come through. We … after Salem, we see no more of Betty or of Abigail. We don’t know what happens to them.

B:    Oh, wow.

M:    The Paris family move away several years after the crisis is over. However, there is one of the major accusers, Anne Putnam Junior, who later recants. Right? She, and it’s a delicate situation, this is about a decade or so after the hysteria, and she wants to join the church. And … awkward, right? Because you can bet there are relatives of the people who were executed in the congregation, and part of this polity, of course, was you presented yourself to the congregation for membership, and they had to approve you for membership. Right?

B:    And is this kind of witch hunting still happening a decade later?

M:    Not as much. Not as much. But she, she does apologize publicly for her role in that. And she said, you know, “I was young. I was deceived,” and so forth. And she tries to make amends, and she’s actually admitted to the church, I believe. I believe that’s right. Speaking of recanting, one of the judges actually recants too. We know about, you know, Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorn, who was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ancestor.

B:    Oh, I wondered about that.

M:    Yes. Well, Hawthorne puts a w in his word, in his name for w for witch.

H:    Oh my goodness.

M:    Yeah, yeah, yeah. As the haythorn, but haythorn, he makes it Hawthorne.

B:    That’s so interesting. You heard it here on the Lakers Way podcast. Yeah, yeah.

M:    And then there’s Samuel Sewell of Boston. There’s a wonderful diary of his, if any of your listeners might wanna go and check that out. It’s a very relative very revelatory piece, not only for his personal spiritual life, but for just kind of life in Boston at the time. He’s one of the judges on the panel, and he too later publicly recants.

H:    Oh, interesting.

M:    And he’s a member of Cotton Mather’s church, and Cotton Mather reads his recantation before the assembled congregation. And Sewell himself, very important figure. He’s a judge. He’s a really –he’s a big deal. He’s standing in front of the congregation with his head bowed.

H:    Oh, wow.

M:    Oh, yeah. It’s a public … it’s an act of humiliation, and he undergoes it voluntarily. He didn’t have to do that. Right. So and there are wonderful biographies of Sewell. He’s fascinating.

H:    So is this again a situation where nobody’s saying there weren’t any witches, but people are starting to say, “Oh, wow. We got carried away.” And …

M:    Yeah. Yeah. There’s an inquest there’s an … I’m sorry, an inquiry, about this afterwards. And, you know, and some of the families of the executed are asking for restitution, if not for charges against those who were accusing and enabling. And we have to remember, we always focus on the nineteen who were executed, but there were almost 200 people arrested in this. And several people, including children, died while in prison.

B:    Wow.

M:    Yeah. Yes. Like Dorcas Good, for example. So, the extent of this was amazing. So we call it Salem, which … but actually, it’s Essex County Witchcraft is more appropriate because it spreads. The accusations go farther and farther out into Essex County, into Topsfield, into Andover, and so forth. And, more and more people get involved in the accusation, what network, until they overreach. They start accusing, you know, ministers and ministers’ wives, and the new governor arrives in 1693, and they accuse his wife of being you know … it’s like, yeah. You’re overdoing it now. Yeah.
You’re going too far. Right? And so yeah.

B:    So, Ken, you’ve been at this a while, studying this history, teaching this history. I wonder how your teaching of this story has changed over the years as attitudes stay–change, as students change, maybe as you’ve you learn more, or has it, has it not? I just wonder, like, are are students these days asking new and different questions?

M:    Yeah. Especially as, for more neo-pagan practices and beliefs have become have been accorded more attention and consideration, and, you know, that’s really changed the nature of, I think, the inquiries and the interests. And that’s presented some interesting challenges, but also opportunities, for teaching. And so, you know, if there are individuals in the course who are professed Wiccans, for example, you know, I’ll ask them to, you know, talk about their perspective on things. And so that’s … and I I think another thing that’s important is I try not to, you know, kind of reduce things to social explanations. You know? That was quite popular for a while. You know, well, it’s family rivalries. Well, it’s social dynamics. Well, it’s, you know, it’s economics. It’s, it’s change from, you know, rural agriculture to, you know, pre modern cosmopolitan, you know, international trade and, you know, and so on and so forth. I try to take into account some of the more personal and more pietistic things that I think are important to consider.

B:    Is there any record of authentic witchcraft Wiccan practices in 17th century America? I mean, I guess I’m coming to the story assuming that most of these accusations were in some ways fictitious, imagined out of the very real pietistic worldview that folks had. But was … were folks bumping into witches in any way that we might imagine today?

M;    There are there are people who confessed to witchcraft Mhmm. Freely admitted they were practicing maleficent witchcraft.

H:    Were they being tortured?

M:    Torture was a legitimate means of examination back then. We don’t have much proof that it was used.

H:    Oh, okay. Okay.

M:    There was, you know, the dunking. Everybody knows about dunking, it seems. But other forms of, you know, physical force were allowed to some extent anyway, but we don’t know exactly how much that was put into effect. So what do you do with these admissions of … And these fairly “Oh, yes. I am. I am.” You know, and they freely admitted, “And I did this and I did that.” You know, is this therefore to be taken literally, or are they seeking attention? Are they … you know? Are there other explanations for why they’re … why they’re doing that? So it’s not again, it’s not either/or. It’s … there are these gray areas of motive and of action that you don’t have all the answers to.

H:    I have a question about the sort of biblical referent for some of this. We’ve already talked about millennialism, which is kind of coming from Revelation. But then we have this passage about the witch of Endor in I Samuel, which actually in the Book of Common Prayer is one of the options for readings on All Hallows’ Eve.

M:    Cool. I wanna hear you do that.

H:    I actually I have the opportunity to give a, like, sub-5-minute, not even gonna call it, a sermon on one of the readings. I’m like, is that the one I pick? Do I pick the Witch of Endor? But okay. We’re we’re, we’re derailing.

B:     I’ll be so disappointed if you don’t do that.

H:    Is … I know in early modern Europe, the witch of Endor is something people are thinking about. Is that in the water in New England, and something that people are understanding in a certain way or talking about a lot?

M:    Sure. Well, of course, there’s the classic text from Exodus as it’s translated in the King James. You know, “Thou shall not suffer a witch to live.”

H:    Yeah. Yeah.

M:    That’s pretty much enough for most.

H:    So that’s the one that they’re bringing.

M:    But the witch of Endor, is an interesting one. And, in the course, I actually have students read that. I have them I have them choose an instance from the Bible that has to do with witchcraft or magic or anything like that, you know, whether it’s the scrolls mentioned in Acts, you know, that they burn because they’re pagan and so forth or other things. So that particular episode is actually one that’s widely debated in early modern Protestant exegesis.  You know, what exactly happened there? Was the spirit that was summoned the actual spirit of Samuel? And that raises all sorts of interesting questions about the separate states of souls and so forth. And can someone like, a diviner, and they call her a witch, but she is really a diviner. That’s the proper term, a diviner. Can someone like a diviner actually summon the soul of a saint? Alright. There’s a lot of issues there. The other, you know, other interpreters would say that, no, she actually summoned, the spirit of a demon in the guise of Samuel. Right? So this is the … and these are the sorts of interpretations that would have been readily known by the clergy in New England, that that there are different types.

H:    And honestly, whichever way you slice it, that diviner is a problem, whether she’s summoning demons or disturbing Samuel’s rest. You know?

M:    Yeah.

H:    It’s not good.

M:    It’s … it ain’t good for whoever’s on the side of being accused Yeah. Of being a diviner or a witch or what have you. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Right. So I’ll be interested in hearing what you have to say about…

H:    So will I. I’m very interested to know what I think.

M:    Okay.

B:    People are gonna wanna hear that. Well, that’ll be a future episode. So when I came to this topic, I really thought of this as distant history, and, something that could would never happen in our age. Right? And so I was just sort of taking notes with at least references to my ear that seemed actually quite current. So it took me about 3 minutes of study to come up with, systemic racism, inhuman and injust incarceration, a nonfunctioning judicial system, patriarchy running wild, misogyny, ministerial malfeasance, and suddenly this starts to feel really current. And so my question is to … you as a historian. You must get, on the one hand, very excited when folks, when your students are making connections to contemporary events and trying to use this learning from history, to prepare them to meet the challenges of the world. And on the other hand, as a historian, you might you must also be concerned with connections being made too readily, false comparisons being made. And so I wonder how you navigate maybe some overeager connection to present day circumstances, but also, I’m sure a real eagerness on your part as a teacher to help, to help students reflect on the present moment in light of the past. How do you navigate that line?

M:    Yeah. Read that list again.

B:    Let’s see. Racism, inhuman and unjust incarceration, a nonfunctioning judiciary, patriarchy running wild, misogyny, and ministerial malfeasance.

M:    Yeah. One of the one of the, you know, undoubted kind of facts about the witch hunt, which not just Salem, but the European and North American witch hunts over that period from 16th to 18th century is that women were the great majority of those accused and the great majority of those executed. And so a famous historian has said that witch hunting was women hunting. Right? And it was a form of, you know, enforcing misogynist and patriarchal practices and customs and habits. And that’s something that I really try to get across as well. So the oppression of women in this particular thing is, I think, something that’s very relevant to what’s happening today, and the, you know, the potential for all of that is really scary. Yeah.

H:    Yeah. Do you think you have advice for current reverends related to all of this? 
M:    Well, I would hope that we would be well beyond, you know, seeing accusations of witchcraft in one’s congregation. But I would … I would say just be ready to encounter and perhaps embrace even a variety of beliefs within what can be termed Christianity so that, you know, you allow– there are Christianities, you know? It’s not just monolithic, and that people come at faith with, you know, of a wide variety of backgrounds and issues and convictions. Right? And so I guess it’s just an openness to understanding exactly. You know, when someone comes in, you know, trying to incorporate a Wiccan or goddess or whatever into Christianity. Though they’re usually seen as opposed, right? There is some effort, some … to reconcile these, and that’s an interesting kind of … that’s an interesting kind of attempt there. You know, I guess just learn about it and see what the possibilities are there for that.

B:    Well, I saw a social media post this morning which made me laugh. And, and the post said, I take this ancient wisdom and put it in a large cauldron with dead animal bones and intentionally-picked herbs from the forest. And it said, witchcraft or soup making?

H:    Right.

B:    And so I’m thinking just, I mean, what a spectrum this is. Yeah. I mean, certainly, there is something called witchcraft, you know, and then there is something at the opposite end of the spectrum, and there is a sort of gradation. And it just made me laugh in preparation for this.

H:    Well, and the key thing seems to be, are you dealing with the devil? You know?

M:    Well, that was the big issue back then with the development of the notion of the demonic covenant and signing the devil’s book. And those were …

H:    … Who I don’t usually consult in making my soup.

B:    Yeah. There’s a bright line that you do not cross.

M:    These were key, these were key elements in the conception of the witch and what witchcraft was. But, you know, that has … except in certain communities, in certain, you know, faith communities there, that’s not so pertinent, anymore.

H:    So I have what might be a final question, and that’s that I think it’s easy to hate on the Puritans, but I happen to know that both of us have a soft spot for the Puritans. What can we learn from the Puritans?

M:    Boy. Okay. That … you’d have to take the whole my whole course on that, I guess, to learn that.

H:    There’s a teaser for our next episode.

M:    Yeah. I guess so. I guess a couple things I’ll mention here amongst many that that could be mentioned. First of all, don’t trust yourself too much. You know? Scrutinize your scrutinize your own motives and your own assumptions about your state and about yourself. That was one thing that you can take away from that. Of course, you can go too far with that as well. There’s there’s a tipping point there, I realize. But this kind of presumption that, you know, all’s right with me and you know, all’s wrong with everyone else, that, those can be kind of kind of dangerous paths to go down. And so this notion of evangelical humiliation is one that I think that’s important, you know, which isn’t to say, of course, there certainly were hypocrites in amongst them as there are today.

H:    So it does seem like the spirituality involves self-examination in a really rigorous way.

M:    Yeah. And I guess the other thing to mention here is the kind of the profound impact that the Puritans have had on the American character, for better or worse. Right? And to recognize that that still pertains very much in our self-conception, our identity, and how we treat others over the centuries, how we … what we’ve done to Native Americans and Africans and, you know, people around the world under the banner of spreading democracy and so forth. That … a lot of that can be kinda traced back to them.

B:    Well, thank goodness we don’t have any conspiracy theories today. So, I mean, maybe my footnote to your final question is

H:    Or villainizing the other.

B:    Or villainizing the other or alternative facts. Yeah. No, I mean, we’ve been cleansed from all this. So, if you were to suggest some reading, some viewing to those who wanna go down this rabbit hole, I presume there are plenty of things out there that don’t tell this story quite right in your mind, but point the way to some resources if folks wanna learn more.

M:    Sure. One of the classic studies of Salem is that by Paul Boyer and Steven Niesenbaum called, Salem Possessed. It came out in the early 1970s and has gone through some revisions, but it’s still a darn good read. And they bring up a lot of important points to understand about Salem, the Salem episode. John Demos’ Entertaining Satan is really good for an overview of witch hunting in colonial New England writ large. He looks at some of those, like we mentioned, in Wethersfield and Connecticut and then elsewhere through the course of 17th century and into, I think, into the early 18th century, if I’m not mistaken. So those would be a couple that you could check out.

H:    Nice.

B:    Ken, we’re so thankful for your time. Thank you for your research, for sharing it.

M:    You’re welcome.

H:    Thanks for joining us.

M:    You’re welcome.

B:    Well, Hannah, I thought we’d end in prayer as we contemplate, just the fragility of the of the human situation. Yeah. Even as we seek the good and seek the kingdom of God confidently and faithfully, that there is still so much potential that things could go wrong within ourselves and within the world.

H:    And frankly, as leaders, a lot of that is in our hands a lot of the time. So we could use some prayer.

B:    I found a Puritan prayer, from, The Valley of Vision, a collection of Puritan, prayers and devotions by collected by Arthur Bennett. And so let’s pray. 
    Oh, Lord, length of days does not profit me, except the days that are passed in your presence, in your service, to your glory. Give me a grace that precedes, follows, guides, sustains, sanctifies, and aids every hour. That I may not be one moment apart from thee, but may rely on your Spirit to supply every thought, to speak in every word, to direct every step, to prosper every work, build up every mode of faith, and give me a desire to show forth thy praise, testify thy love, and advance thy kingdom. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

H:    Thanks for listening to the Leaders Way podcast. You can learn more about this episode at berkeleydivinity.yale.edu/podcast. Follow along with us on Instagram at theleadersway.podcast.

B:    And you can rate and review us on your podcast app and be sure to hit follow so you never miss an episode. And if you’d like this episode, please share it with a friend.

H:    Until next time.

B:    Peace be with you.