Anne Hutchinson

Anne Hutchinson engaged a diverse group of powerful men as well as the disenfranchised during the mid-1630s in Boston’s so-called Antinomian Controversy, the name given to the theological battle between John Cotton, who emphasized free grace, and other clerics who focused upon preparation for those seeking salvation. Hutchinson followed Cotton’s position, presented his theology in meetings in her home, and inspired her followers, male and female, to reject pastors opposing Cotton’s position. Hutchinson’s followers included leading men who opposed John Winthrop’s leadership of Massachusetts Bay Colony; this dispute also became an arena where Winthrop reasserted his power. Hutchinson represents the Puritans’ drive for spiritual development within, including her claim of revelation. She is best understood within a transatlantic framework illustrating both the tools of patriarchal oppression and, more importantly, the appeal of Puritan spirituality for women.

Interrelation between Law and Gospel in the system of social-ethic doctrine of the Polish Brethren

This paper explores the issue of correlation between the Law and the Gospel in the controversy of Polish brethren on social-ethical topics. The debating sides built their argumentation on varying understanding of the Holy Scripture texts in the forming of moral codex of “the proper Christians”. The radical side was determined that the proper Christian cannot be a part of peccable social order, based on the violent standards of Old Testament’s Law (Dekalog). The other, conservative one, believed that the Old Testament’s Law was not canceled by the Gospel, but was conversely fulfilled and explained by the Christ. Therefore, the proper Christian does have place in the actual social life, and also can be a magistrate, judge or soldier. The polemic between Polish brethren is based on intellectual heritage of West-European Reformation. It was inspired by the reception of anabaptism and its theological doctrine of non-resistance and “isolation from evil”. The religious arguments of the sides may be considered as a repercussion of antinomian controversy (at one time initiated by German reformers Ph. Melanchthon and J. Agricola).

Change and Continuity

This chapter explains that by the mid-1640s, a Holy Spirit-centered understanding of conversion and assurance (nicknamed “Antinomianism”) had acquired a new group of advocates who hailed it as an alternative to the practical divinity. Orthodoxy had constantly spawned renegades and outliers who tested its boundaries. Now, however, originality was becoming more widespread and controversy more intense in response to a mixture of political and intellectual circumstances that included the collapse of censorship. How the practical divinity was being assailed and defended are topics that lead to the Antinomians of mid-century, the Westminster Confession, and the reasoning of ministers such as Samuel Rutherford on behalf of orthodoxy. The chapter then revisits the Antinomian controversy that roiled mid-1630s Massachusetts. Here, too, debate was prompted by criticism of the practical divinity. The chapter also describes change and continuity in institutional and cultural practices in the orthodox colonies in New England.

Disgusting Affects from the Antinomian Controversy to the Antiabortion Movement

Focusing on disgust opens up critical paths that involve more expansive scopes of space and time than are possible with strictly historicist approaches to Puritan studies. This essay investigates the remarkably similar tactics for inducing disgust in narratives from the 1640s of the antinomians’ monstrous births and in the US Senate floor debate of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act just before the Iraq War in 2003. In both instances, rhetoric comparing familiar bodies to unfamiliar corporeal forms conjures powerful feelings of disgust that legitimize intervention. These powerful affective tactics help identify “rogues” to be eradicated—either colonial rogues, a “rogue procedure,” or a “rogue state”—hardening the border-focused feelings of disgust into hegemonic control. The essay concludes by taking a cue from the Puritans about embracing the inevitability of encountering disgusting feelings alongside wondrous ones, as well as inspiration from testimonies of abortion providers in the years immediately following Roe v. Wade, and arguing that critical attention to disgust enables the possibility of imagining a multiplicity of responses to different forms of embodiment.