Large Fierce Mammal

In a speech delivered in 1999, physicist Steven Weinberg said, “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”

I get endless mileage from the line that if there’s one thing we learn from history, it’s that people don’t learn anything from history, and here I go again because it’s one of the Great Truths. Sometimes the result of this unfortunate human propensity is simply wasted time and effort, other times somebody gets hurt. This article is about the latter, and deals with a subject that is as relevant today as it has ever been at any other time in history because it has repeatedly happened and continues to happen. Witch hunting is a growth industry that never falls out of fashion and shows no signs of slowing down.

I personally expand the term “religion” beyond the traditional definition that exists purely within the confines of spiritual belief. In its truest sense, to recognize “religion” we don’t need a dictionary; we simply need to watch for its effects on the way events play out. Taken in moderation, religion can actually be a vehicle for good, but when it becomes malignant, like any disease, it presents with consistent symptoms that are hard to miss.

Religion is first and foremost about control, and selling the idea that nobody can find the true path on their own. It seeks to redefine independence and self-sufficiency as deviant and suspicious traits. The root of the belief system can be spiritual, political, or a combination of the two. Whatever the underlying doctrine, we’re talking here about organized systems of belief that take control of what people think and how they conduct their lives by exerting that control through the premise that we’re all in danger from an identifiable evil, it must be fought at any cost, only our leaders can show us the way to salvation, and anyone who questions their commands is part of the problem. Of such is born the tragedy commonly known as “the burning times”, the Salem witch trials, wholesale slaughter of North American Indians, Marxism, Nazism, McCarthyism, the current war in the Middle East, and an assortment of travesties in between. We get persecution on grounds of witchcraft against women who are too ugly or too pretty, reasons found to justify the torture and extermination of entire subgroups of a larger population because they practice a religion, live their lives, dress, or simply look different from the rest of a population.

Each one of these events share blatantly common structural elements with every other.

– A time of uncertainty, fear, or even indignation over a perceived wrong;

– An opportunistic  system of governance and/or legal adjudication that uses the current sentiment as leverage to assert greater control and enhance its power;

– An unhappy event or series of unhappy events afflicting the land that the population is successfully convinced only the governing leadership has the wisdom and resources to fully understand and explain; and

– A scapegoat that, once again,  only the government has the wisdom and means to eradicate by leading the righteous faithful to the reward of a brighter tomorrow.

Interwoven through these elements and completely controlling how each interacts with the other is the one universal constant necessary for evil to take root – greed. Greed is the special ingredient that lets you sleep at night after turning your neighbour over to the Inquisition, the secret police, the Gestapo, or Homeland Security just because he got the girl you want, she refused your advances, or they just drive a nicer car than you.

Here’s an example of what I mean. In the late 17’th century, three counties in Massachusetts were going through trying times, with a rigidly religious puritan population embattled in seemingly endless disputes over land. 71 year old Rebecca Nurse, along with her sisters Mary Easty and Sara Cloyes, were accused by eight girls of having sent them into unprecedented fits of madness through witchcraft.

The accusation launched a period of sanctimonious hysteria that ended the lives of Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Good, Susannah Martin, Elizabeth Howe. Sarah Wildes, Martha Corey, Ann Pudeator, Samuel Wardwell, Mary Parker, Alice Parker, Wilmot Redd, and Margaret Scott. Sarah Cloyes survived simply because the witch hunters hadn’t yet gotten around to hanging her before the madness subsided.

Rebecca Nurse was a widely respected pillar of the community, and her arrest on charges of witchcraft raised such public outrage that the magistrates involved in the case prosecuted her with reluctance. Many who knew her came forward to testify on her behalf but, in the end, the testimony of her eight accusers held sway.

And where does greed come into play? Husband to Rebecca Nurse was Francis Nurse, a prominent land owner who was involved at the time in a number of title disputes with a man named Thomas Putnam. Thomas Putnam was the father of Ann Putnam, one of the eight girls who accused Rebecca Nurse of witchcraft. Rebecca Nurse was hanged on 19 July 1692, all the others I listed above followed in a mass hanging on 22 September 1692. It took years of guilt to motivate her, but Ann Putnam later recanted her accusation in a letter read by her pastor to the congregation of her church. She said the Devil made her do it.