The Wordy Shipmates

This section focuses on Anne Hutchinson’s conflicts with John Winthrop and the Boston congregation after she arrived in Massachusetts in 1634. Hutchinson was a midwife and a devout follower of ministers like John Cotton; unlike other women, she took an active role in theology and leadership. She grew so popular and influential that Vowell calls her “the Puritan Oprah—a leader, a guru, a star” (208).

Her interpretation of predestination irked John Winthrop and other influential men. Their central theological conflict was about the covenants of works and grace. In Puritan theology, works (good deeds like charitable donations) do not earn a person their place in Heaven—only God can grant that. Grace, meanwhile, is God’s salvation, which He “only doles out to a select few individuals, none of whom are ever entirely certain they have made the cut” (211). Hutchinson preached that God’s elect (including herself) could feel saved through a personal connection to God that bypassed the strict hierarchy of Puritan society.

Authority figures viewed being contradicted as a violation of the Fifth Commandment, which requires obedience and deference to father figures. To prevent losing power and influence, Bostonian magistrates acted as “the arbiters of which persons are or are not dangerous” to their colony (217), banishing those that resisted.