The Puritan Belief System In The Crucible By Arthur Miller

The Puritan belief system is like poison. It slowly destroyed and killed the Puritan society; making it suffer immensely. The Crucible by Arthur Miller is based around 1692, in Salem Massachusetts. It’s about a girl named Abigail and her friends who are caught doing witchcraft (dancing) in the woods. Two girls become stuck in a coma like state; later to wake up after a few days. All the girls are afraid of the consequences in store for them if the truth is revealed to the community. To save themselves, they accuse multiple innocent people of witchcraft and for causing the two girls to go into a coma. The Puritan belief system is the cause of the negative effect on the people in The Crucible. Because of how strict it’s religious beliefs became,

They abused their power and lied when they began to realize they were wrong; causing innocent people to die because of it. Under “Basic Puritan Beliefs” in the “Age of Faith” notes, Puritans believed that “those elected by God have full power to interpret the will of God” (2.2). In the Bible there are stories of God leading his people through prophets like Moses or Jeremiah; the Puritans, in the same way, are led by men who are supposedly directly connected to God. Because of all this power given into the hands of these men, they can never be wrong. The only way they could be wrong is if the Puritans would start questioning their authority and prove to society that they aren’t interpreters of God. But unfortunately because that’s against the Puritan belief system, society just blindly follows and believes everything the officials of the court say and do. In The Crucible during the middle of a trial, Judge John Danforth proclaims: “You must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between. This is a sharp time, now, a precise time—we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world. Now, by God’s grace, the shining sun is up, and them that fear not light will surely praise it” (62). Everyone in the Puritan society

Society sat and watch as people were hanged to death because the court said they were witches. “A huge CROWD, filled with excitement and hostility, is gathered for GOODY OSBURN’s execution—and hurls insults at her as she is to be hanged” (80). Because society is so ignorant about what the officials of the court are doing and the suffering Abigail and the girls are causing people. Society just happily praised God for the death of innocent people. Some people took advantage of this witchcraft nonsense when they saw it benefited them. Accusing their neighbors of witchcraft because they were greedy for land or jealous of them. In the “Age of Faith” notes it lists that some visible signs of Puritan Decay was the “Decay in business morality - lying…” (6.1). The Puritan belief really screwed up society, even though it was all about being pure and staying true to God’s word; it only lead to lying cheating and the death of the