Anne Hutchinson questions?

Question

Is there any other reasons why she caused a controversy other than hosting her own religious groups at her home?

what issues were really at stake at the trial?

and why did they think she was a threat?

Answer 1

She was a threat because she was a woman and didn't think men should be in charge.

She dared question male elders and she acted like she knew something about God and religion. That made her a threat!

Answer 2

The issues involved were complex and mystifying to a modern (2008) audience.  The Massachusetts Colonies were a Patrical/Male based society with GOD at the top and various MEN acting as 'interpreters' of 'God's Will.'  For a woman to claim that FAITH alone was key to salvation and to suggest that hard work & unrelenting toil were not part of God's plan went contrary to what men such as John Winthrop preached.  On trial was Anne's intellect and learned argument as well as her habit of addressing men as her equal rather than taking on the role of an inferior being, see snippet below...

http://harvardmagazine.com/2002/11/anne-...

"""----------------She was accused of breaking the Fifth Commandment, which requires honoring one's parents, by refusing to defer to the magistrates, her fathers in the colony, and to the clergy, her fathers in the church. The transcript of her trial shows her to have been deft in theological and legal sparring, intellectually superior to her accusers, and a woman of conscience who yielded to no authority.

Having been found guilty in her civil trial, she was placed under house arrest to await ecclesiastical trial. In 1638, the final blows were delivered. A sentence of banishment was never in doubt. Her former mentor, John Cotton, fearing for his own credibility, described her weekly Sunday meeting as a "promiscuous and filthie coming together of men and women without Distinction of Relation of Marriage" and continued, "Your opinions frett like a Gangrene and spread like a Leprosie, and will eate out the very Bowells of Religion."

Peace/////////\\\\\\\\\\\\\////////\\\...

)Would you truly want to scare the Men of Boston of the times of Anne? Send Hillary Clinton back in Time - - - !!)