Puritan Dissidents: Roger Williams And Anne Hutchinson

Two Important Puritan Dissidents

“The Puritans left England for America not because they couldn’t be Puritans in their mother country, but because they were not allowed to force others to become Puritans; in the New World, of course, they could and did.”- Gore Vidal.

The Puritans had many unbiblical views about Christianity, such as the Covenant of Works and forced salvation. If it were not for the certain people in our history who defied them, we may still be living by their doctrines today. In this paper, we will walk through the lives of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, two famed Puritan dissidents from colonial times. As we walk through their trials and circumstances, we can see how devoted to their cause they were. Nobody is perfect,

He was known at Cambridge for his skill in foreign languages, which was a skill that would help him greatly in learning the tongues of the Native Americans. He was ordained in the church of England but converted to Puritanism while at Cambridge. His conversion caused him to feel disillusioned by the authority the church of England had over the English government. He and his wife, Mary Bernard, left the country in December of 1630 to set sail for the American colonies. They settled in Boston initially, but Williams’ controversial views led him to seek positions first in Salem and then in Plymouth, a separatist colony. He was unable to preach because of his anti-establishment views, so he began trading English goods for food and furs from the Wampanoag and Narragansett tribes. He soon became friends with Massasoit, the chief of the Wampanoag tribe. Williams believed that church and state needed complete separation. He said that “forced salvation stinks in God’s nostrils”, meaning that religion means nothing if you do not accept salvation for yourself and not as an imposed law. He had dangerous beliefs about taking communion and demanded continuous proof of one's salvation before taking communion with them. He had his own somewhat heretic interpretation about who was saved and thus able to take communion, and at one

Her father, a dissident preacher named Francis Marbury, taught her scripture at a young age. She married a merchant named William Hutchinson and together they had fifteen children, all born from 1614 to 1630. She was inspired by Reverend John Cotton, the vicar at the local Lincolnshire parish. When Cotton joined a group of dissidents in North America, Hutchinson and her family migrated to Boston, Massachusetts. When Hutchinson arrived in Boston in 1934, she developed strong ties with the other women, having been trained as a midwife, and she began holding meetings with them to discuss Cotton’s sermons. Gradually, her meetings shifted from discussing sermons to criticism of Puritan beliefs. The primary belief she disapproved of was the Puritan view of “the covenant of works”, which was the role of good works and adherence to religious law in salvation. Hutchinson believed that salvation was not something you could earn by working, but was rather something that everybody had once they accepted Christ. She believed in a potential heretic view known as antinomianism, which implies that there is no connection between works and salvation. While her views opposing Puritan doctrine upset the authority, it was her defiance of Puritan gender roles that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as she began leading studies for not only women but also prominent men. This upset the Puritan church leaders