Why quakers were persecuted

The Quakers rejected the orthodox Calvinist belief in predestination. Instead, the Quakers insisted that salvation was available to all. It came, however, not through an institutional church, but from within, by following the "inner light" of God's spirit.

It was because Friends seemed to shake when they felt religious enthusiasm that they became known as Quakers. In England as well as in a number of American colonies the Quakers faced violent persecution.

Some 15, Quakers were jailed in England between and In , Edward Burrough catalogued the maltreatment of Quakers in New England: 64 Quakers had been imprisoned; two Quakers lashed times, leaving one "beat like into a jelly"; another branded with the letter H, for heretic, after being whipped with 39 stripes; and three Quakers had been executed.

Even in New York, which tolerated a wide variety of religious persuasions, the Quakers faced hostility. Later the same year eight Quakers were arrested on a ship arriving in Boston Harbor.

Their leader, Christopher Holder, stumped the Puritan magistrates when he pointed out that they had no law proscribing Quaker belief.

Laws were quickly passed with increasing severity: the first offense would be to have one ear cut off, and offending a second time would cost Quaker males the other ear. Quaker women were to be whipped instead. If Quakers, male and female, had not their lesson by the fourth time, "their tongues would be bored through with a hot iron.

Mutilation of religious rebels was commonplace in England and the cutting off of body parts was not original with the Boston magistrates. The first turning point in Roger Williams' life was the day that he witnessed the mutilation of a Puritan in London. During his time in the pillory, this alleged "Sower of Sedition" lost both his ears and his nose. The letters "SS" were burned into his forehead and he spent the rest of life in prison.

Five Quaker women left the safety of Rhode Island, where Williams had established religious liberty in America for the first time, and came to Boston to support their oppressed comrades.

As soon as they arrived they were thrown in jail. Each of the jailed women were stripped and checked for bodily signs of witchcraft, specifically a third teat by which a "familiar" was nursed. Thirty-four years later, a special Puritan court would execute 20 male and female witches, many with Quaker lies, in an unprecedented superstitious frenzy. The Bay Colony Puritans concluded that Satan had sent them this Quaker scourge, so on October 19, the General Court of Boston passed a law stating that any Quaker refusing banishment would be executed.

The result was that Quakers kept coming back to Boston with more zeal than ever. The Quakers: Denominations in America. Westport, Conn. Loar, Carol. David Schultz and John R. Vile, — Armonk, N. Ryman and J. Mark Alcorn. Quakers [electronic resource]. Other articles in Religious Perspectives and Churches. Want to support the Free Speech Center? Donate Now. Schneider, Louis W. Penner, Melinda.

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