How the Salem Witch trials still apply today

I have always loved history. My favorite books as a child were the Little House on the Prairie series, and even in my teenage, trashy Danielle Steele phase, my favorite ones always took place in some exciting time in history. In the past ten years I have started to devour books on English history, both fiction and non-fiction, especially biographies. It's interlinked with my love of Genealogy and wanting to learn more about the times in which my ancestors lived. Which could be a whole other blog post!!

 The story of the Salem witch trials has always been fascinating to me. The hysteria that can arise from something small, and in this case, lead to the death of innocent people is something we can't even fathom in this 'enlightened' day and time. Interestingly enough, at the end of a lovely presentation at the Salem Witch Museum, the presenters showed that the same cycle that resulted in the Salem trials has been happening over and over again throughout history.

What it essentially boils down to is Fear + Trigger = scapegoat. In the case of the Salem Trials, the fear was of God/Devil, the trigger was unusual illness which could not be cured through the primitive ways of the time, or by the priest, so therefore one doctor proclaimed it witchcraft. In which a hunt begins and stories circulate wildly by gossipy young girls and tenuous evidence is presented. It becomes a situation of damned if you and damned if you don't. Literally. And the scapegoat becomes (mostly) women who are guilty of nothing but using herbs for healing, serving women as midwives, and using their skills to help and heal those around them.


A Poppet or doll, given in evidence against Bridget Bishop, the first victim.

 Upon reflection, it occurred to me that if I had lived during the 16th/17th/18th centuries, I probably would have been a healer and a midwife, as these are some of the gifts and talents the Lord has blessed me with today, practicing in the relative safety of the 21st century! If I had lived in those times, not just in Salem, England and Europe went through the same thing, I could have been seriously persecuted and in danger of my life for what I believed and knew, and practiced in my day to day living. My integrity would be questioned, the work I did would be twisted into something evil and malicious.  I could be in a position where I would be asked to give up or deny what I believed, in order to save my life.

This idea is what has been brewing in my mind; asking myself what would I be willing to do?  Would I have broken under the torture these women were put through, and denied what I knew to be true, reject my knowledge?  Would I have been one of the young girls, caught up in the frenzy and speaking against these women?  Would I have been a spectator, too afraid to defend my midwife, the woman who had brought my child safely into this world, for fear of being persecuted myself?

What made me think even further, and what really is the reason it has taken me so long to be able to write and post this; is to look at myself today, and see any similar patterns going on now? And what side am I on?

The museum gave a few more modern day examples of the Salem cycle: the McCarthy Communism trials in the US and the early days of the AIDS epidemic.  Luckily for me, my medical education came in the 90's not the 80's, so the AIDS hysteria was winding down, but there was a lot of persecution because so much was unknown about the disease.  

For me personally, there is something going on in our day that is looking like a very similar cycle as the Salem Witch trials. Fortunately no one is dying over this issue, but I feel like it creates wild swings in anger and persecution.  And that is the marriage debate.  Whether marriage should be between one man and one woman, or not.  Personally I feel like I cannot express my opinion on the matter because it is not 'right with the times' and that I will be persecuted for my beliefs. Is this sounding familiar? 

In the Salem cycle of Fear+Trigger=Scapegoat, I think there are many things that could be inserted in each of those categories. Whether they are realistic to me or not, they are very real to the people involved.  I don't want to get into the semantics of gay versus straight, marriage versus commonlaw.  What the concern is for me, that I have been reluctant to speak on, is the right that I have, as a human being living in a modern society, to worship and believe as I see fit for me. Whether the legal definition of marriage is changed or not, really, is no consequence to me, but if the legal starts to impede my right to worship, or forcing clerics to change how they worship, or perform religious ceremonies, that very much concerns me.  I think that there is room in this world for all types of legal unions, it has just been commonly called Marriage because the institution has been so long based in a union associated with religion. If you really want to separate Church and State perhaps we need to just change the wording so that anyone who wants to be legally united can be, and those who wish to be 'married'(by the common term used by Christianity to define the union between a man and a woman) can do that too. Or make up a new word to separate the two, I don't care. But please stop battering on religious people who believe what they do and hold sacred things that fundamentally anchor them to be good people in this world! We no longer live in a time where people(gay or straight) are burned at the stake for their beliefs, so why are we behaving as if we were in 1690's Salem?