Benjamin C. Ray, \"The Salem

Benjamin C. Ray, "The Salem Witch Mania': Recent Scholarship and American

History Textbooks," Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 78, No.

1, (March 2010): 40 -- 64.

Sara Gross

Prof. Sellers in his 2010 article, "The Salem Witch Mania': Recent Scholarship and American

History Textbooks," author Benjamin C. Ray challenges the contemporary narrative of the infamous Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts during the 17th century. According to Ray, that historical narrative is based largely on the evolution of an inaccurate consensus built on characterizations and conclusions in secondary sources that do not necessarily comport with the historical record reflected in primary sources. In particular, Ray argues that none of the traditional foci on social, political, and interpersonal conflicts emphasized by contemporary historical texts were the principal causes of the phenomenon. Rather, according to Ray, religious paranoia and the vitriolic attacks of one preacher in particular against non-members of the dominant church were to blame.

Ray suggests that contemporary historical narratives focus excessively on the brutality of the events and on the fate of its unfortunate victims while accepting the inaccurate accounts of historians who ignored the principal cause that was genuinely responsible for it. As is the case with most of the worst examples of man's inhumane treatment and persecution of fellow man, the root of the Salem Witch Trials are likely attributable directly to religious obsession and intolerance by dominant religious institutions of alternate religions.

Ray explains that prior to the 1990s, contemporary historians rarely questioned the established narrative that highlighted the supposed importance of governmental instability, Caribbean voodoo, teenage hysteria, and the growing economic conflict between agrarian society and emergent industrialization and capitalism. More recent research outlined by Ray suggests that these issues were, at best, minor contributing factors to the evolution of the witch craze that culminated in the Salem Witch Trials. According to Ray, 19th century textbook accounts were designed more to illustrate the emergence of moral progress from its dark Puritan colonial past rather than necessarily to provide historically accurate accounts of the details. Thereafter, subsequent historical texts simply accepted that perspective and failed to explore alternate explanations evident in primary sources or to question the accuracy of various often-repeated conclusions about causation.

In particular, Ray argues that contemporary history textbooks identify five specific issues that, according to a more thorough analysis, were not as important as the one cause that has been largely ignored by prior accounts: namely, the antagonism of Reverend Samuel Parris toward village residents who refused to join his congregation. The main causes focused upon by most historians since the 19th century have been the supposed weakness of government authority during the inter-charter period from 1689 to 1692; the manner in which Reverend Parris's slave Tituba frightened several young girls with tales about Voodoo rituals; and the growing political and economic changes that pitted traditional agrarian farmers against more modern industrialism and the capitalists who threatened their way of life. According to Ray, those explanations ignore what more recent research has identified as the principal cause of the witchcraft hysteria in Salem: religious paranoia, intolerance, and persecution.

In that regard, Ray details the historical record showing that the principal origin of the Salem Witch Trials was in the intense antagonism on the part of Reverend Samuel Parris toward village residents who refused to join his congregation. For months before the accusations about witchcraft against Tituba, Parris railed against the unconverted as "wicked" and referred to the "chosen" members of his church and those who had "betrayed" it and who sought to destroy his village church and, ultimately, the entire church of England. Ray also notes, significantly, that all of the young girls whose accusations were the initial spark for the witch craze were members of prominent church families. By the time their accusations first surfaced, Parris's audience had been well primed to root out supposed "agents of Satan" against whom Parris had directed his paranoid rantings for months.