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Have you ever heard of Anne Hutchinson? Her name
appears in all Unites States history text books
(and if it doesn’t it should), and for anyone
who has lived in the New York City area it may be
familiar from the river that goes through the Bronx
and the parkway named after that river. She lived
in the Bronx and died there in the mid-seventeenth
century. She came there after being forced out of
the Massachusetts colony, that she had come to three
years early as one of the dissident Protestants
who were fleeing persecution from the official Church
of England. After taking refuge in what we now know
as Rhode Island, she eventually fled there as well
out of fear that the same people who banished her
from Massachusetts were going to take over the colony
that she and those banished with her had established.
She eventually came to the Bronx due to the reputation
of tolerance towards other religious groups of the
Dutch who had colonized that area.
She died soon after, with her remaining family
members, in a raid on her homestead by the local
natives in retaliation for atrocities committed
against them by the local Dutch colonists. That
Anne Hutchinson and her family were the only victims
of that raid was the direct result of her unwillingness
to flee in the face of this danger. She had no argument
with the native peoples and had opposed the wars
against them while still living in Massachusetts.
She was simply one in a long line of victims that
got caught up in the cycle of violence that was
created around them.
What makes her experiences stand out, from the
many others that had a similar life and shared a
similar fate, were a number of factors. One was
her willingness to stand up for her convictions
against the formal patriarchal authority of her
community at a time when few other women could.
Her story also shows how easy it seems to be for
a group that recently fled persecution could so
easily become the persecutor when they are in power.
One of the other reasons Anne Hutchinson stands
out is the degree to which she took a stand of openness
and tolerance towards the beliefs and opinions of
others. She was no liberal in the tradition of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but she was
certainly one of her forebears. In many ways she
is one of the parents of the system of democracy
that so many of us advocate. Not so much in terms
of institutions and established protocol, but in
a more practical, yet theoretical, way of approaching
the idea of a democratic system.
What we too often forget is that a healthy democratic
society can only survive when there is an open and
unencumbered expression and sharing of ideas. Without
this a democratic society can become as intolerant
and destructive as any aristocratic or dictatorial
society. Giving every one the right to vote for
example does not mean that the end result will be
one that most of us who support the advance of democracy
would concur with. I keep thinking of the example
of 1860, where a vote was taken in New York City
on the measure as to whether the right to vote should
be extended to the free male black population. The
voters of New York resoundingly voted against it.
There are so many more examples, many of which are
far more heinous.
It is not just being open to new and different
ideas, but the willingness to contest orthodox and
established standards and beliefs. It is those periods
when authority and orthodoxy were questioned that
the concept of democracy was enhanced and extended
throughout this country’s history. Without
it the right to vote, the very basis upon which
a democracy base’s its legitimacy, would never
have been extended to African-Americans, women and
other groups that have played such a vital role
in the life of this nation state. What it takes
is the openness on the part of individuals, on the
part of each of us, to be open to new ideas, to
be willing to question any or all of the ideas and
concepts that we use to interpret and understand
the world. Too often when events in the world undermine
our beliefs, we end of holding on to them more fiercely
rather than re-evaluating and re-assessing them.
One of those ideas is the very idea of democracy
itself. As recent events show us you can not simply
impose it on a nation or a people. It needs to grow
organically, develop out of the traditions and institutions
that are already in place. The ideas need to be
nourished so that they can develop on their own.
I do not believe that any place exists where democracy
can not eventually flourish. As well as there is
no place that it can not eventually die if it is
not cared for or stifled, cut off from the lifeblood
that dissent and the questioning of authority provides
to it. It was able to grow here because certain
traditions were brought from other countries and
certain people, like Anne Hutchinson, who questioned
and dissented provided the basis on which those
initial democratic ideas and traditions were able
to develop and grow.
What is true for the health of the politics of
a society is also true for an individual’s
and a society’s spiritual health as well.
In the seventeenth century there was little separation
between the political and the spiritual, and the
same seems to be true for most places in the world
today. Anne Hutchinson was not what most of us would
think of as a political rebel. Her dissent was against
the rigid orthodoxies of an established church as
well as the rigid orthodoxies of her fellow dissenters.
In standing against religious authority she brought
all authority into question other forms of authority
as well. She appeared to be able to question authority
while still being tolerant and open to the differences
and complexities of those around her. It is when
we become rigid and inflexible in both our political
and religious beliefs that we have the potential
to be the most destructive and dangerous.
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