Anne Hutchinson and Religious Freedom

 

Lest you suppose the Puritan's came to the new world to establish religious freedom for all, be reminded that on this day in 1638, Anne Hutchinson was expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony for religious dissent.

She was a Puritan religious reformer with strong religious convictions that were at odds with the established Puritan clergy in the Boston area.

The Puritan Pilgrims were not committed to individual religious liberty as much as their freedom, as a community, to practice their convictions.

Hutchinson was put on trial in that community. She was tried and convicted, then banished from the colony with many of her supporters.

She is a key figure in the history of religious freedom in the colonies and the history of women in ministry.

She has been called "the most famous—or infamous—English woman in colonial American history"

She is an ancestor of U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.