Jonathan Edwards vs.

Anne Hutchinson

Comparison: Personal Lives(Family Tradition)

Both come from a family tradition of preaching

--Hutchinson: “daughter of persecuted Puritan minister” (207).

--Edwards: “Groomed to succeed his grandfather as pastor of the Congregational Church” (Holt 44)

Personal Lives--Outcasts

Both exiled for “extreme” approaches:

--Edwards “dismissed from prestigious position” and “relocated to the raw and remote Mohican community” where he spent “eight years of missionary work in virtual exile” (Holt 44).

--Hutchinson banished and excommunicated, so she moved to Rhode Island, where she was killed by Indians at war with the Dutch

Personal Lives—Gender (Hutchinson)

One of our country’s earliest feminists:

--midwife

--led women in study groups at home

Personal Lives—Gender(Hutchinson)

Persecuted for her gender

“We do not mean to discourse with those of your sex” (Winthrop in her trial)

Told she’s supposed to instruct the younger women “to love their husbands and not to make them clash” (Vowell 225).

Personal Lives—Gender(Hutchinson)

Limited opportunities:“It’s unfair that her gender kept her from

pursuing her calling. She should have been a minister or a magistrate….There’s nothing wrong with healing women, or women’s healing. There is something very wrong, or at least very sad, that a legal, theological mind like hers, on display only in her trial transcripts, didn’t get to study law or divinity at Cambridge like her male peers and accusers” (Vowell 237).

Personal Lives—Gender(Hutchinson)

Limited Opportunities: Father “helped her cobble together the best

education possible for female children (who were denied university attendance)” (Vowell 207).

Vowell on Plymouth Compact: “All of the signers were there because of her, because she stood up to Massachusetts and they stood with her. But all the signers were men. Anne Hutchinson wasn’t allowed to sign the founding document of the colony she founded” (238).

Personal Lives—Gender(Edwards)

Abilities recognized early:

Sent to Yale at 13

Quickly established himself as a strong-willed and charismatic preacher after his grandfather’s death

Theology--Comparisons

Both Puritans who believed to a certain extent that a believer’s actions alone will not provide them with an entrance to heaven.

Theology—Differences (Church Attendance)

Hutchinson—antinomian; privileged personal relationship with God over everything else, even if that relationship is fostered outside of church attendance.

Edwards: “There is no other reason given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending His solemn worship” (48); part of Great Awakening, which brought people back into church attendance.

Theology—Differences(Outward Appearances)

Edwards’s crowds swooned and shrieked in an attempt to make it appear as though they had felt God’s grace descend upon them; go to church as another outward sign.

Hutchinson: “The differences between Hutchinson and her accusers is that Hutchinson believes that anyone, even a nonbeliever can seem saved. The only way to know one is saved is when one feels saved” (Vowell 211-212).