<div dir="ltr" style=""><div>Thanks for your post. I have always been interested in the Salem Which trials as William Phips is a brother of one of my ancestors.</div><div>Roger<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div><div style="padding-left: 5px; margin-left: 5px; border-left-color: rgb(119, 119, 119); border-left-width: 3px; border-left-style: solid;">-----Original Message-----<br />Subject: [Vision2020] Moscow Neo-Puritans Re-Write Witchcraft Trial History<br />From: "Nicholas Gier" <ngier006@gmail.com><br />To: vision2020 <vision2020@moscow.com><br />Date: 03/05/15 18:00:28<br /><br /><title></title>
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<div style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 18px;"><font face="georgia, serif">Good Morning Visionaries:</font></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 18px;"><font face="georgia, serif">The main source of my column was Eve LaPlante highly praised book "Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall" (2007). In stark contrast to Cotton Mather, who wrote a book-length defense of the trials, Sewall wore sack cloth for the rest of his life to repent for his sins for participating as a judge in the trials.<br /></font></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 18px;"><font face="georgia, serif">There is two corrections I need to make: 1) the teenage girls did testify that "specters" (hence "spectral" evidence) told them that the ones they accused were witches and from the Devil; and 2) the adjective "hysterical" is now ill-advised (as anti-woman) and there may have been natural causes for their hallucinations. </font></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px;"><font color="#000000" face="georgia, serif"><span style="line-height: 18px;">The following is just one of several theories about what may have caused the girls' strange behavior:</span></font></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px;"><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); line-height: normal;">A widely known theory about the cause of the reported afflictions attributes the cause to the ingestion of bread that had been made from rye grain that had been infected by a fungus,</span> <i style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); line-height: normal;"><a title="Claviceps purpurea" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claviceps_purpurea">Claviceps purpurea</a></i><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); line-height: normal;">, commonly known as</span> <a title="Ergot" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: normal;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergot">ergot</a><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); line-height: normal;">. This fungus contains chemicals similar to those used in the synthetic</span> <a title="Psychedelic drug" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: normal;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_drug">psychedelic drug</a> <a title="LSD" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: normal;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSD">LSD</a><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); line-height: normal;">. Convulsive</span> <a title="Ergotism" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: normal;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergotism">ergotism</a> <span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); line-height: normal;">causes a variety of symptoms, including nervous dysfunction.</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 18px;">will now check the web to verify what the leading theories are about their "visions." (Wikipedia)</span></font></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px;"><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 18px;">By the way, </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 18px;">NSA Fellow of History Christopher Schlect is listed on the college website as having a "Ph.D." and also being "ABD" (All But Dissertation). Of course most of us know that a student must write a dissertation to receive a Ph.D. at WSU. NSA now has more Ph.D.s on its roster, but, embarrassingly so, Schlect is not one of them.</span></font></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: 18px;"><font face="georgia, serif">nfg</font></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 150%;"><b><font face="georgia, serif">MOSCOW'S NEO-PURITANS REWRITE WITCH TRIAL HISTORY</font></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 150%;"><b><font face="georgia, serif"><br /></font></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 150%;"><font face="georgia, serif">By Nick Gier, The Palouse Pundit</font></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: 150%;"><font face="georgia, serif"><br /></font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><font face="georgia, serif">On the 10<sup>th</sup> day of this month 322 years ago, Lydia Dustin, found not guilty of witchcraft but unable to pay her jail fees, died in prison in Salem, Massachusetts. The witch hunting frenzy culminated with 185 people accused and 19 hanged. One man Giles Corey was slowly crushed to death between two doors because he would not enter a plea. Presumably the punishment is designed to "press" a confession out of the accused!</font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><font face="georgia, serif">On October 29, 1692, Governor William Phips terminated the witchcraft court and dismissed the judges. His own wife had been accused, and the general fear was that soon everyone would be charged with a crime of the dark arts. Even the great Rev. Cotton Mather's wife was targeted as a witch after giving birth to a deformed child.</font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><font face="georgia, serif">Christopher Schlect, a Fellow of History at Moscow's New Andrews College, has written a reinterpretation of the witch trials in the Christ Church journal <i>Credenda Agenda</i> (vol. 7:2,3). Schlect claims if it had not been "sober minded clergy" reaffirming Puritan standards of justice, there would have been far more executions. </font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><font face="georgia, serif">The Puritan ministers, however, were concerned only about "spectral" evidence, and apart from that reservation, they urged the trials to continue. Historian Edmund S. Morgan states that a sermon preached by Salem minister Deodat Lawson in March 1692 was "an important factor in the widening of the Salem scare." The publication of this sermon was endorsed by five major Puritan divines, including Increase and Cotton Mather.</font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><font face="georgia, serif">Ironically, Schlect resorts to the separation of church and state in his defense of the Puritan clergy. The witch court was a civil not a religious body, and Schlect praises the pastors for their "godly virtue of submission to authority." Insisting that the trials be stopped would have made them guilty of the sin of "humanistic individualism."</font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><font face="georgia, serif">Schlect ignores the fact that the clergy were intimately involved in identifying alleged witches and then recommending the accused for trial. With regard to the alleged witch Mary Glover, hanged in 1688, the "sober minded" Cotton Mather declared that she was "a scandalous old Irishwoman, a Roman Catholic, and obstinate in idolatry." </font><span style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in; font-family: georgia,serif;">Martha Carrier's sons were tortured into testifying against her, and as she was led to the gallows, the good Rev. Mather yelled out that she was a "rampant hag." It was Thomas Barnard, the assistant minister at her church, who had arranged for the brutal interrogation of Carrier's sons.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><font face="georgia, serif">At the hanging of the Rev. George Burroughs, the condemned was able to recite the Lord's Prayer flawlessly, a widely accepted sign that Burroughs was innocent of the charge of witchcraft. The crowd was amazed and clamored for his release, but Cotton Mather asserted his pastoral authority and insisted that the execution proceed.</font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><font face="georgia, serif">Schlect states that there is a "glaring need in our own society for a resurgence of stalwart Puritanism." In <i>Credenda Agenda</i> (3:9,11, now removed from the internet) Greg Dickison declares that "if we could have it our way," then there would be capital punishment for "kidnapping, sorcery, bestiality, adultery, homosexuality, and cursing one's parents." </font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><font face="georgia, serif">As their theocratic vision is unlikely to be fulfilled, I would recommend that Schlect and Dickison express their godly virtue and submit to secular authority, which is based on the "humanistic individualism" of our Founding Fathers. This allows free men and women to criticize anyone who would make ancient religious laws the laws of the land. </font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><font face="georgia, serif">Fourteen of those hung for witchcraft were women living at the margins of society. Appealing to our secular Constitution, dozens of sober minded appellate court judges have ruled that all citizens, including our GLBT brothers and sisters no longer in the closet, should marry whom they love and be free from harassment and discrimination. </font></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><font face="georgia, serif">Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. </font></div>
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