The Causes Of The Church In The Salem Witch Hunt?

1. Salem, Massachusetts is known for the witch trails. The trails were all about how people claimed other residents in the town were witches to get the guilt of being called a which off of them. This phenomena spread though the entire town as people were proclaiming each other were witches and many were hanged for the crime of being a

During 1692, from June to September, 24 people died due to accusations from people who assumed they were witches. Many historians have come up with possibilities and answers as to why civilized people would kill each other. Using the evidence provided, The Salem Witch Trial Hysteria was caused by jealousy, supremacy, and segregation.

xi). “The residents of Salem were after all, Puritans, which means they viewed their community not just as a group of individuals, but as a single entity united under God” (Possible Causes… Par.3). The social tension caused by the differing opinions on the separation of the village from Salem Town strongly contradicted their religious ideals that they were all supposed to be as one. The farming people in Salem Village thought that the thriving economy of the harbor in Salem Town made it far to individualistic (Sutter Par.3).

Between the months of June to September of 1692, the infamous witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts resulted in the hanging of 19 men and women; the deaths of five others, including two children, while imprisoned in jail; the pressing to death of an 80-year old man, and the stoning of two dogs for collaborating with the Devil. Hundreds of others faced accusations and dozens more were jailed for months during the progress of the trials. For over three hundred years these events have not only captured the general publics' imagination, but that of the academic community. Beginning with Charles Upham, in 1867, historians have attempted to explain the mass hysteria that swept through Salem in 1692. These accounts vary both in their

The purpose of this book was to examine the history and social life of Salem Village to try to figure out what was the cause of the events that occurred there. I believe that the authors achieved their objective at least they did to me. Boyer and Nissenbaum's explanation for the outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Salem hinges on an understanding of the economic,

out in what is now the town of Danvers, then a district of Salem Town,

Many of the villagers felt there was status difference between them and the townspeople of Salem; which the Salem villagers resented (Trask xi). The villagers also did not like the distance they had to travel in order to attend services, nor did they approve of the progressive message they had being preached to them (Griffeth 163).

In 1692 the area of Salem town and Salem village became very vulnerable to conflict. Severe weather such as hurricanes had damaged land and crops, the effects of King Phillips War began to impact New England society, and colonists were being forced off of the frontiers by Native peoples. The Church and the government were in heavy conflict. And those residing in Salem began to grow suspicious of one another when some prospered and others hadn’t (Marcus, p13).

One of the most important factors to consider is that during the 1690’s the church of Salem Village was conflicted about being too conservative, which caused a divide in the congregation. This division lead to social and political issues between the two groups. This rift resulted in presumably innocent people being accused of witchcraft. In 1689, Samuel Parris was invited by the Salem Village church committee to take over church services after the dismissal of George Burroughs. This was not the first time that a minister had been fired from the Salem Village church. Anthony Brandt deliberates a theological shift which occurred in the Salem Village in his piece “An Unholy Mess”. He writes the congregation had been in dispute over on whether they should become more like the progressive Half-Way Covenant, such as the church in Salem Town. This new theological approach would offer more community members a chance to become church members and would do away with the strict Calvinistic view of the “visible saints”. The concept of “visible saints” decreed that only certain members of the church were guaranteed entrance into heaven, could participate in Communion, and they sat special seating at service. Samuel Parris was a firm Calvinist Puritan and had no desire to see the church make such a reformist change. Parris in fact used this division to create a social divide among the four hundred villagers who had not been allowed membership into to the church or to be baptized. He

Human beings always have been curious creatures. We are a species that is always searching for answers to unexplainable events. Take aliens for example. To us, aliens may or may not exist (depending on your individual belief of course). Yet we still take such an interest in them that we continuously search for answers and proof of alien. Now that we have modern day technology, we can attain “proof” of alien life-form somewhere deep in outer space. But given the date 1692 in New England, if we were to even come in contact with aliens it would have been considered some supernatural phenomena, and even cause quite a bit of hysteria. That is what happened to the puritans in Salem village during the Salem Witch Trials, in Massachusetts, in the year 1962. The puritans of Salem village were extremely paranoid, and they believed that if something can’t be explained then it had the devils influence. So when a group of Salem girls spoke up about the devil and witches, the villagers of Salem went into a panicked frenzy. Truth of the matter is that there were no witches in Salem nor was the devil at war against Salem; the Salem Witch Trials were only a result of endless lies, conspiracies, and side effects of an illness.

History shows the remarkable things that society has done over the years, it also shows where society failed and mistakes were made. This is the case of the Salem Witch Trials. The people of Salem experienced an event that would change them and the course of this country forever. The mass hysteria and rampant paranoia that swept New England in 1692, is what turned neighbor against neighbor. The Salem villagers would accuse one another of casting spells, consorting with the devil, and being witches, all of which was a punishable crime in the 17th century. ("Search")

In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, he writes, “We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!” (Miller 77). This partially fictionalized tale of the Salem Witch Trials points to one of the causes of the trials, vengeance, but the over dramatized tale 's early stages were quiet. The Salem Witch Episode had humble beginnings in the town of Salem Village, Massachusetts, but evolved into one of the most widely known witch trials in American History. The gallows in Salem claimed the lives of nineteen men and woman during the spring and summer of 1692 due to the accusations of witchcraft with over a hundred people who were accused. After all the terror and the uproar of the trials occurred, everything came to a screeching halt (Linder 1). Due to the unique circumstances of this particular set of witch trials, from the rampant accusations to the discontinuation of the trials mass hysteria does not seem to be fault as with other witch trials, but a variety of factors. The Salem witch trials were not just a simple case of mass hysteria, but a combination of factors ranging from poisons to superstitions to scapegoats, resulting in the outbreak of the Salem Witch episode.

Salem Village was a small settlement under the control of Salem Town in Massachusetts. The village was notorious for its witchcraft hysteria that broke out in 1692, and the execution of twenty accused of being witches and wizards. The incident became an interesting topic for both historians and playwrights. However, the bizarre witch trial and the girls’ mysterious symptoms disguised the social and political movement which subtly influenced the small village for half a century. Only recently have historians started to dig out the complete history of the witch trials, and (have) tried to integrate the isolated incident of witchcraft hysteria with the normal life in Salem Village. Therefore, a new interpretation of the Salem Witch Trials emerges, where the events in Salem Village actually represent an early form of urban and rural division. The newly found evidence suggests that witchcraft hysteria is a direct product of social instability, which was triggered by the rapid commercialization of 17th century New England, the division between urban town and rural village, and the rise of the new merchant class.

The witch trials began when nine girls, known as the afflicted girls, experienced strange symptoms. In the beginning, there were only five afflicted girls: Betty Parris, Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam Jr., Mary Walcott, and Mercy Lewis. Elizabeth Hubbard, Susannah Sheldon, Mary Warren, and Elizabeth Booth later began experiencing the symptoms, which involved strange fits, irregular body contortions, and fevers. Although the symptoms seem phenomenal, modern theories suggest that the children were merely bored, abused, or had epilepsy, a mental illness, or a disease that was obtained from eating rye bread infected with a fungus. Reverend Samuel Parris, Betty Parris’ father, asked Dr. William Griggs to deduce the problem, and Dr. Griggs concluded that they were bewitched. The group of girls accused three women of causing their unnatural behaviors: Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba, a slave owned by Samuel Parris. The women were easy targets for the girls because they were outcasts (Brooks). Sarah Good was a beggar, Sarah

Salem village is located in Massachusetts it’s a small town by the north shore that was once part of New England and was once a puritan colony. Salem village had so many different things to do in that colony such as business, trading, farming and ship building it had easy access to the sea for trading and marketing. In the 1690s Salem village had a population of six hundred residents through the village and farmers. The economy in 1692 was terrible everyone wanted part of anything just to survive as it was expanding more villager stated hiring slaves and workers jealousy started spreading. Salem village was scared to be exposed to all different diseases that where around 1600’s also scare of starvation