Anne Hutchinson and Unitarian Universalism

My Unitarian Universalist congregation (the First Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts) has the somewhat dubious distinction of being the church that hosted Anne Hutchinson’s civil trial in 1637, in which she was sentenced to expulsion from Massachusetts.

In American Jezebel, Eve LaPlante uses the transcript of this trial to tell the story of Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy. The narrative moves back and forth, from the events preceding the trial to moments in the trial itself. As LaPlante notes, the trial transcript provides a rich written record of Hutchinson’s words (as well as those of her accusers and defenders) in a time when women rarely left behind any written historical record.

But despite the importance of the trial, both for its documentation and its impact on the course of history, I didn’t feel that LaPlante’s use of it as the central structure for the book worked well. There was something choppy and dizzying about the bumpy ride she took me on through two continents and multiple generations. (Although, given the frequency with which the key historical figures crossed the ocean between England and America, I wonder if they themselves experienced an odd sense of disconnection and disorientation). A more chronological telling of the story might have made for a faster and smoother read.

The most enjoyable part of reading American Jezebel for me was learning about Boston in the seventeeth century. LaPlante goes into delightful detail about the landscape of the Boston area at the time. Here she describes Hutchinson’s journey from her home to her civil trial; her route encompasses parts of modern-day Boston, Charlestown, Somerville, and Cambridge:

Anne had set out with William for the Charlestown ferry, almost a mile from their house. Ordinarily they made a trip of this length, roughly five miles to Cambridge, on horseback or by coach, but they had traveled on foot because of the ice, which could break a horse’s leg….

…During their four-mile walk inland from Charlestown to Cambridge, they had passed Indian encampments, a few colonial houses and farms, the expansive marshland that bordered the northern bank of the river, and deep forest, extending for miles north and west, beyond what was known. The same trip today, by subway or car, takes twenty minutes, but on foot it took the Hutchinsons more than two hours that morning in 1637. (Page 15, 2004, 1st edition).

Many of the important sites in Hutchinson’s life can still be located in modern Boston (and other parts of New England), and LaPlante provides a helpful final chapter on visiting these sites.

The connection between Hutchison and modern-day Boston can still be easily recognized and traced, almost four centuries after her trial. But what about the connection between Hutchinson and modern-day Unitarian Universalism?

Hutchinson had two trials. The first trial, referred to above and given extensive coverage by LaPlante, took place in what was then the meeting house of the Cambridge church (which is now the First Parish in Cambridge). This trial was presided over by the Great and General Court of Massachusetts and resulted in Hutchinson’s banishment from Massachusetts. She was also tried separately by a group of ministers; this trial was held in her own church’s meeting house, in Boston. The verdict was expulsion from the congregation (which is now First Church Boston).

At the time, both congregations were Puritan. LaPlante describes First Church as “the world’s first congregational church.” It was in the first half of the nineteenth century — roughly two hundred years after Hutchinson’s trials — that both congregations became Unitarian. (Thankfully, both congregations also have materials about their history on their websites (history of First Parish Cambridge, history of First Church Boston). Now both congregations are Unitarian Universalist.

Obviously it would be inaccurate to refer to Hutchinson as a Unitarian Universalist! But can Unitarian Universalists claim Hutchinson as a forerunner of our modern faith? Hutchinson was a religious heretic who affirmed the possibility for individual laypeople to connect directly with the divine and to share the insights of that relationship with their fellow laypeople. As a woman, she was unusually powerful and respected as a religious leader and teacher. Our modern Unitarian Universalist movement also affirms the value of individual religious insight and truth, and approximately half of our ministers today are women.

But in other ways, Hutchinson theology contradicts our own. Hutchinson’s theology centered around questions of who was saved, how one came to be saved, and how one could tell if one was saved. By contrast, it may be argued that Universalism in America provided a radical alternative to the American religious obsession with salvation, and over the course of centuries helped move ideas about salvation away from the center of popular American religious discourse.

I suspect that I’m just scratching the surface here of possible continuities and ruptures between Hutchinson’s legacy and modern Unitarian Universalism. The question remains in my mind: What can Unitarian Universalists today learn from Hutchinson that deepens our understanding of our own faith? How do we evaluate her influence on and relevance to modern Unitarian Universalism?