What religious beliefs where around during the times of the Salem Witch Trials?

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Yeah but I side with the citizens of Salem who oppose the Halloween aspect forced onto the town.

They want to preserve the history of Salem having to do with the Witch Trials and have nothing to do with the current witch craze during Halloween.

Also, the town has lot’s of fortune teller shops and other nonsense that having nothing to do with the history.

Jim
 
ltwin said:
Well, it should. Shouldn’t it?

It’s a play about a 17th-century witch-hunt, which is really a metaphor for the anti-Communist witch-hunts of the 1950s.
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mrsdizzyd said:
What I’ve wondered is, what happens when some who was OSAS turns out to be acting all sorts of sinful ways? Would they say that they had adjudged that person incorrectly? Would they ignore it? How does that work?
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Are you asking about the Puritans or about modern OSAS? The Puritans would no doubt say that someone who was “saved” would act in a godly manner. Sanctification was part of conversion. If someone sinned, they might have to confess publicly before the congregation. They might be excommunicated for a time if their sin was severe enough and they refused to acknowledge their wrongdoing and repent. Historians continue to use these recorded confessions to gain insight into daily life in colonial New England:
STURBRIDGE, Mass. — Sarah Blanchard was sorry she skipped a worship service. Sarah Wood apologized for denouncing infant baptisms. And as for the Cheneys, Joseph and Abigail? Well, “with shame, humiliation and sorrow,” they acknowledged having had sex before marriage.

More than 250 years ago, their confessions of sin were dutifully logged by the minister of the church here, alongside records of baptisms, marriages and deaths, notes about meetings heated and routine, accounts of finances, texts of sermons, and, in some cases, personal accounts of conversion experiences from young adults.
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Modern OSAS people–I’m not an expert on that but I’m aware of people who take extreme positions (like saying a sinner’s prayer guarantees you eternal security).
 
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JimR-OCDS said:
Yeah but I side with the citizens of Salem who oppose the Halloween aspect forced onto the town.
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Totally off-topic – there’s a really cool maritime museum in Salem that by itself is worth the trip.

D
 
ltwin said:
Sanctification was part of conversion. If someone sinned, they might have to confess publicly before the congregation. They might be excommunicated for a time if their sin was severe enough and they refused to acknowledge their wrongdoing and repent
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Public confession was also practiced by the early Christians. Many of the penances involved humiliating public penances. One Roman emperor, Theodosius I, had to perform an act of pubic penance that lasted several months before he was allowed to receive Communion. How I thank God that we now have private confession! 😃
 
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TigerLily-1 said:
Public confession was also practiced by the early Christians. Many of the penances involved humiliating public penances. One Roman emperor, Theodosius I, had to perform an act of pubic penance that lasted several months before he was allowed to receive Communion. How I thank God that we now have private confession! 😃
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Often, there were steps taken to get the offender to repent before it was necessary to take it to the whole church. Part of “owning the covenant” was agreeing to practice “mutual watchfulness” over other members of the church and community. If someone was misbehaving in someway, members of the church would speak privately to that person multiple times before they would take it to the congregation.

And then of course, the teaching and ruling elders were not in charge of the process–they just presided over it. It was the members of the church who decided what happened to the offender.

We know that one of the accusers in the witch trials, Ann Putnam, apologized and confessed her wrongdoing when she wanted to be admitted as a church member:
I desire to be humbled before God for that sad and humbling providence that befell my father’s family in the year about ’92; that I, then being in my childhood, should, by such a providence of God, be made an instrument for the accusing of several persons of a grievous crime, whereby their lives were taken away from them, whom now I have just grounds and good reason to believe they were innocent persons; and that it was a great delusion of Satan that deceived me in that sad time, whereby I justly fear I have been instrumental, with others, though ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon myself and this land the guilt of innocent blood; though what was said or done by me against any person I can truly and uprightly say, before God and man, I did it not out of any anger, malice, or ill-will to any person, for I had no such thing against one of them; but what I did was ignorantly, being deluded by Satan. And particularly, as I was a chief instrument of accusing of Goodwife Nurse and her two sisters, I desire to lie in the dust, and to be humbled for it, in that I was a cause, with others, of so sad a calamity to them and their families; for which cause I desire to lie in the dust, and earnestly beg forgiveness of God, and from all those unto whom I have given just cause of sorrow and offence, whose relations were taken away or accused.
[Signed]
This confession was read before the congregation, together with her relation, Aug. 25, 1706; and she acknowledged it.
J. Green, Pastor.
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