Anne Hutchinson: Midwife of Religious Freedom
by Aimée Koeplin, Ph.D.
Anne Hutchinson was a Puritan colonist in Massachusetts Bay Colony. She was banished from the colony as punishment for challenging theocratic rulers and went on to co-found Rhode Island with Roger Williams. The vigorous defense that she mounted in both her court and church trials was an important forerunner to the development of the constitutional notion of separation of church and state.
Migration to New England
From her earliest age, Anne Hutchinson was no stranger to religious controversy. Her father, Francis Marbury, was a minister in the Church of England and a Puritan reformer himself.
Puritanism was a religious movement focused on “purifying” the Church of England. Puritans wished to free the church of any vestiges of old Roman Catholic practices, which they viewed as contrary to authentic Christianity.
Marbury’s outspoken dissent from the orthodox views of the Church of England led to his arrest and trial for the crime of heresy. Marbury was convicted and sentenced to house arrest, and he was unable to preach in church or leave his home.
The time Marbury spent at home allowed him to make sure that his many children, including Anne, had the education that he wanted for them. For Anne, this meant that she received a much more thorough and robust education than she otherwise could have hoped for as a middle-class girl in 17th century England.
Anne Marbury married prominent Lincolnshire wool merchant William Hutchinson in 1612. They raised a large family together, and Anne became a highly respected midwife. Anne and William shared a commitment to Puritan theology and quickly became part of Puritan minister John Cotton’s inner circle.
The Hutchinsons were persuaded by Cotton to emigrate from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634. The colony had been recently established by John Winthrop and the Massachusetts Bay Company to be a Puritan utopia, a “shining city upon a hill.” In New England, Puritans would be free to establish new churches and worship in the way that they thought best, free from the Roman Catholic imagery and practices that they had found objectionable in England.
Because the Hutchinsons were respected and wealthy members of the merchant class, the journey to the New World for Anne, Will, and their
twelve children was fairly comfortable. They sailed aboard the Griffin, a ship that had previously transported John Cotton and his family. Before leaving England, the Hutchinsons secured materials for a large house.
Anne believed that she had prophetic gifts; that she could foretell the future and determine whether a person was “among the elect.” In Puritan theology, if one is “among the elect,” it means one is destined to go to heaven.
On the passage over, Anne got into a theological argument with minister Zecheria Symmes. Hutchinson declared that she could tell that Symmes was not among the elect. Symmes was livid. He found Anne’s claims to prophecy (especially about his own salvation) theologically suspect. But he also thought it illegitimate for a woman to question a minister’s teachings.
To make matters worse, in Symmes’s view, Anne had developed a significant following among the passengers aboard the ship sympathetic to her theological views. Anne’s claims to prophecy were buoyed by the fact that she had correctly predicted the date the ship would land in Massachusetts, although it was several days ahead of schedule. Upon arriving in Massachusetts, Symmes brought his complaints against Anne Hutchinson to deputy Governor Thomas Dudley.
Hutchinson in Massachusetts Bay Colony
When they arrived in Massachusetts, Anne and William built their home in the Shawmut peninsula area of Boston. They happened to be right next door to Governor John Winthrop. This meant that Winthrop was familiar with the Bible-study groups that began to meet in the Hutchinson home.
Anne’s work as a midwife made her well-known among the families of the colony. She had a good reputation for her intellect and skills. Anne knew the Bible and had a theological mind to rival any of the ministers.
But, as a woman, there was no chance that Anne could preach as an official minister of the church. What she could do, and was even expected to do as a prominent, older woman of the community, was to lead younger women in Bible-study groups.
As a rule, Puritans placed a high value on reading the Bible and understanding church doctrine for oneself. (This was contrary to the Roman Catholic practice of receiving information about the Bible from ordained priests reading it in Latin.) But women typically received no formal religious instruction. This made it difficult for them to be able to read the Bible and know the necessary doctrines.
Home study groups, known as “conventicles,” were a way for women to help one another in religious instruction. The conventicles in Anne’s home became very popular. At times as many as 60 people were in attendance. A second weekly meeting was added, which included men as well as women.
The second weekly meeting was the beginning of trouble for Anne Hutchinson. It violated a tenet of Puritan theology that says that women should never be the teachers of men.
In addition, Governor Winthrop worried that Hutchinson’s conventicles were trouble for him. Not only were they popular and well-attended, but one of the men who attended was Henry Vane, an English lord and chief political rival of Winthrop’s at that time. Because Governor Winthrop lived next door, he was able to see just how popular Anne’s meetings had become.
While Winthrop may have been threatened by the popularity of the meetings, he was also concerned about their contents. One of the key tenets of Puritanism is the idea of “predestination.” This is the view that God has perfect knowledge of the future. And if God knows what will happen in the future, it has already been determined. Consequently, the question of whether one is going to heaven or hell has been predetermined.
Among the utopian Puritan colonists there was disagreement about whether one’s predestined salvation was due to the “free grace” of God, or whether one had to prepare one’s soul for God’s grace through good behavior while on earth. Hutchinson, John Cotton, and others took the “free grace” position, in which there is nothing that a person can do to affect their own salvation.
John Winthrop and John Wilson, pastor of the Boston Church, took the “preparationist” position, claiming that although salvation comes from God, it is each person’s responsibility to prepare his or her soul to receive God’s grace through his or her actions (works). The free-grace faction found preparationism to be too close to the offensively Catholic position that a person can “earn” her way into heaven by her good works.
Winthrop, Wilson, and other preparationists were concerned that Anne Hutchinson was winning over many members of the Boston Church to the free-grace point of view. They found this especially concerning because they were in positions of authority. If people believe that their actions — whether good or bad, law-abiding or not — have no effect on their salvation, then those people would not have sufficient reason to follow the law, or to be obedient to civil and religious authorities.
As Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, Winthrop wanted to do everything in his power to ensure the success of the colony and to maintain the colony’s royal charter (the king’s permission to form an English colony in Massachusetts). They labelled Hutchinson as an “antinomian,” someone who promotes lawlessness. (From the Greek: anti = against; nomos = law).
Hutchinson on Trial
Although Winthrop was keen to force Hutchinson to stop her meetings and stop spreading her free-grace message, it was unclear that he had the legal means to do so. Anne’s meetings were held in her private home. And, as a woman, she had no official role. Even so, Anne was arrested and made to stand two trials: a civil trial before the Boston court, and a church trial before ministers of the church in Boston.
Forty judges and magistrates from all over Massachusetts were present at the civil trial for slandering ministers and “troubling the peace” of the colony. Anne was questioned about her conventicles, and whether she had insulted ministers of the church. Even without the benefit of legal counsel, Anne answered questions clearly and concisely, with fluent citations from Scripture. She stated her positions and articulated her reasons for holding them. During her examination Anne made the bold claim that she experienced direct revelations from God. She also incorrectly predicted the destruction and downfall of the Massachusetts colony. Winthrop, speaking on behalf of the other judges, declared her to be “a woman unfit for our society.”
Commentators tend to agree that Hutchinson acquitted herself extremely well at trial. Ironically, her polished comportment may have contributed to her legal undoing. Due to her outspokenness on religious matters and her unwillingness to back down or blindly accept pronouncements of religious and civil authorities, she lost both her civil and church trials. She was sentenced to banishment from the colony.
Banishment
William Hutchinson and others went with Roger Williams, himself a Puritan minister who had been banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony for preaching “dangerous opinions,” to establish a colony in what is now Rhode Island. After her church trial in April of 1638, Anne and her younger children went with about 60 people sympathetic to Anne’s cause to the Rhode Island colony. The Hutchinson group walked for six days. Anne was 45 years old and pregnant for the 16th time. Once in Rhode Island, she was reunited with her husband.
After William Hutchinson’s death in 1642, Anne and her seven youngest children moved to what is now New York State (then, New Netherlands). Unfortunately, they were caught up in the war between New Netherlands colonists and the Siwanoy tribe. Anne and most of her household were killed in a Siwanoy raid.
Legacy
Hutchinson, her trial, as well as her “heresy” have had a lasting impact on American history. This is most easily seen in the importance that America’s founders placed on religious freedom and holding religion as a matter of individual conscience in some of America’s foundational documents. The Royal Charter for Rhode Island (1663) established that colony as a place where each citizen could follow the religion of his choice.
The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, written by Thomas Jefferson in 1777, outlawed requiring citizens of Virginia to support a certain church financially and outlawed religious tests for holding office. Jefferson reasoned that “Almighty God hath created the mind free.”
Just a few years later, Virginians were faced with legislation establishing public financial support for Christian churches. In response, James Madison published the “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments” in 1785, in which he argued against state funding for religion. Madison forcefully argued that religion is a matter for an individual’s private conscience. Madison also recognized the possibility that state funding for religion would cause people to leave the state, having “a like tendency to banish our citizens.” Madison’s choice of language calls to mind Hutchinson’s banishment, along with that of Roger Williams.
The Founders’ commitment to religious freedom is notable in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” These first words opening the Bill of Rights emphasize the importance of freedom of conscience with respect to religion. Anne Hutchinson and other early religious dissidents left a legacy that guaranteed individual religious freedom in what would become the United States of America.
Harvard College (later Harvard University) was founded in Massachusetts in 1636 but had no buildings or professors, yet. Two weeks after Hutchinson’s civil trial ended in 1637, the General Court of Massachusetts — which included John Winthrop — issued funds to actually build the college. The purpose seemed to be hastening the training of new ministers who would defend Puritan orthodoxy. In 2002, Harvard Magazine referred to Anne Hutchinson as the “midwife of Harvard.”
Anne and William had 15 children, many of whom went on to have large families of their own. Hutchinson’s descendants include Supreme Court Justices Melville Weston Fuller and Oliver Wendell Holmes; several presidential aspirants including Stephen A. Douglas, George Romney, and Mitt Romney; and three U.S. Presidents: Franklin D. Roosevelt, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.
Questions for Discussion
- How did Anne Hutchinson’s childhood experiences prepare her for her life as a Puritan leader in Massachusetts?
- Why did the Puritan authorities feel particularly threatened by Anne’s activities in Massachusetts Bay Colony?
- In what ways did Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and Madison’s “Memorial and Remonstrance” reflect the values or beliefs preached by Anne Hutchinson?
This article was originally published in the Fall 2019 issue of Bill of Rights in Action (BRIA), the quarterly curricular magazine of Constitutional Rights Foundation. Click here for a classroom activity on this article, plus writing and discussion questions for use with high school students. You can also subscribe to BRIA for free here.
