Why did Puritan leaders banish Anne Hutchinson from Massachusetts?

Answer 1

Anne Hutchinson's conflict with the colony's Puritan religious establishment began with a series of Bible-study classes. Hutchinson invited her friends and neighbors — women, at first — to discuss in her home the literal words of the Bible. She may have also discussed the teachings of charismatic local minister, the Reverend John Cotton, according to one historian although other sources suggest that the colony had banished the Reverend Cotton around the time of her arrival in Massachusetts.

At some point in her teachings, Hutchinson moved beyond straight-forward discussions of Biblical texts and into the more controversial practice of commenting on teachings from the pulpit of the established religious hierarchy, specifically the Reverend John Wilson. As word of her teachings spread, she accrued new followers, among them men like Sir Henry Vane, who would become the governor of the colony in 1636. Contemporary reports suggest that upwards of eighty people attended her home Bible study sessions. Officially sanctioned sermons may or may not have had more regular attendance. Peters, Vane and John Cotton may have attempted, according to some historical accounts, to have Reverend Wilson replaced with Anne's brother-in-law, John Wheelwright. In 1637, Vane lost the governorship to John Winthrop, who did not share Vane's opinion of Hutchinson. He instead "considered her a threat to his 'city set on a hill'," according to Gomes, and described her meetings as being a "thing not tolerable nor comely in the sight of God, nor fitting for [her] sex."

Hutchinson publicly justified her comments on pulpit teachings, against contemporary religious mores, as being authorized by 'an inner spiritual truth'. Governor Winthrop and the established religious hierarchy considered her comments to be heretical, i.e. unfounded criticism of the clergy from an unauthorized source. In March 1638, the community voted to excommunicate her from the Massachusetts Bay Colony church for dissenting the Puritan orthodoxy. They accused Hutchinson of blasphemy and of lewd conduct. She was put on trial, found guilty and eventually banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.