How Did The Puritans Put Their Religious Belief In The Salem Witch Trials

The Puritans believed word from word what was written in the bible, they put their religious belief into their laws and believed that all sins should be punished by hanging or thrown in jail. Not only did they extremely focus on religion but there was already tension between Salem Village and Salem Town, where they were far wealthier. As the accusations of witches started in Salem, the Puritans religious belief and the conflict between Salem Village and Salem Town caused the Salem Witch Trials. Puritans are colonists who were seeking religious tolerance, so they left England and settled in the American colonies. Their goal was to create communities that was centered around the church to support their Christian way of life (Salem Witch Trials).

It started during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to have been possessed by the devil and accused many different local women of witchcraft. The group of young girls started to meet in the Salem Village home of a local Puritan pastor, Samuel Parris (Dector). Parris owned a slave, Tituba, who was captured from Barbados. She shared with the girl’s harmless voodoo-like tales and rituals from her native West Indies. However, voodoo was an evil unwritten religious faith from western Africa that came to the Americas with the capturing of salves; thus making this against Puritans belief (Salem Witch Trials). The girls started to feel bad about what they were doing with Tituba and felt scared of the consequences if they were caught. Thus, through their own guilt, the girls started to get the best of themselves. They started to “attempt to shift the responsibility for their own inadequate defense of the frontier to the demons of the non-seen world” (Norton 308). Some of the girls also started to act differently, they complained of physical sickness, visions, they trembled and began babbling without restraint and even tried to commit suicide. The girls decided to blame their strange behaviors on Tituba, who was an easy target because she was a slave (Salem Witch Trials).

Worldview taught them that “they were chosen people who were entrusted with the task to bring God’s message to the wicked land, which was previously ruled by the devil” (Norton 395). They believed that God sent them messages through large and small events in their lives. Such as, if they saw something strange in the sky, comets, droughts, smallpox, natural disasters or sudden deaths of children or spouses, they were all messages from God to them. The bad thing about this, however, was that they did not understand or interpret the meanings of these “messages” correctly (Norton 296). Also, Puritans believed that everyone struggled between the powers of good and evil; but also that Satan would select the weakest individuals, such as women, children and the insane, to bring out his work on the world. Those who showed too much interest in Satan or followed him, would be considered as witches. “Witchcraft was one the worst crimes someone could commit, and the automatic punishment for this was death” (1692 Salem). When the witchcraft accusations started, the communities’ quick response was to look to the Bible for help (Salem Witch Trials). Thus, the Puritans religious belief caused the Salem Witch