"SALEM WITCH TRIALS"

“SALEM WITCH TRIALS”

            This past week was one of traveling and reflecting, after my lecture at Princeton Seminary.  We took the African-American heritage tour in Boston and then went to Salem to look at the extraordinary 10 months or so in 1692, which became know as the Salem witch trials.  Our daughter Susan had devised and directed a play last year on the Salem girls who had become possessed by demonic powers and had accused many, many people of being witches.  Nineteen of those who were accused were executed, eighteen by hanging, and one by the medieval torture of “pressing,” where more and more weight was gradually added to the person’s body until it was crushed.  More died in prison awaiting trial or were unable to pay their way out of prison before they died.  It was a time when mass fear seemed to overwhelm everyone.

            Susan led us on this tour, and it was sobering and powerful, because in many ways, we seem to be hovering around there in 2018.  The Salem Witch Museum had a formulary for various periods in American history, where similar occurrences happened.  Their formula was “fear+trigger= scapegoat.”  They emphasized that fear was ever present in Puritan New England, and that when the girls got possessed, that served as a trigger that led to many people becoming scapegoats, with disastrous consequences.  The Museum asked visitors to give suggestions for more episodes in American history.  I suggested the time of lynchings in American history.  There was a great white fear of African-Americans, triggered by the new amendments to the Constitution which affirmed the citizenship and even the humanity of African-Americans.  This fear and trigger led to the lynchings of so many African-Americans, and yes, there is still no federal law against lynching.

            And, I also added 2018 to the suggestion. It was no stretch to put our time into that category.   I have been thinking that we are close to the time of the 1850’s, when the country split apart into the Civil War.  Or, at times, I think that we are close to the 1890’s, when the white Southerners, who lost the Civil War, reconstructed their power with both laws and violence, with the conservative Supreme Court ratifiying their work.

             Our time at Salem makes me wonder if we are not closer to 1692.  With the Trump administration’s evil policy on family separation, we see the outcome of the fear plus the trigger leading to scapegoats.  Trump built his campaign and now his presidency on cultivating fear of the other, especially immigrants from Mexico and south and from Africa.  Trump seems to be doing this in order to get votes, but the Salem history should give us pause.  If this fear persists and begins to grow, there will be a tipping point at which the process takes on a life of its own and is no longer under any person’s or group’s control.   The Salem terror was relatively short lived, lasting only 10 months or so.  I asked Susan when and why it ended, and while she named several reasons, there were two main reasons.  First, a judge finally stood up and no longer allowed “spectral” evidence, meaning that those possessed could no longer cite ghosts as the verification of someone’s being a witch.  Most of the evidence evaporated at that point.  Second, the girls accused the governor’s wife of being a witch, and the usual political power stepped in.  However, nineteen innocent people had been given the death penalty by then (most of them were women). 

            Are we in that kind of time now?  I hope not, but I am uneasy about the kind of demonic power that has been loosed in our current times.  The best current cure is for all of us to step up and be witnesses for justice and equity and mercy, and of course, all of us must register to vote in the November elections.   The Democrats are no saviors, but in these difficult times, they may be our best political hope.  So, register to vote, and get your friends and neighbors and colleagues to register and vote.