The Economics of Witch Burning
Kitsap UU Fellowship • October 25, 2009
Ministering to All Ages Henry David Thoreau
Fall is my favorite season. I love the way the trees change color. All summer long leaves look
green because of the chlorophyll. Then the weather gets cold, and the leaves start to die. Their
true colors begin to shine through. The trees glow gold, fiery red, brilliant orange, and sun-bright
yellow.
Meanwhile other plants as they are dying let go of the lush and luxurious greenery, and focus all
their energy on creating little seeds, with hard outsides, and everything they need to make new
plants on the inside.
The dying plants start to decay, and there‟s that smell...the fall smell that reminds us “the wheel of
life is turning again. And it turns for you, as well.”
Nature has so much to teach us...if we are willing to pay attention.
I want to tell you today about a man who spent two years paying very close attention to what
nature had to teach. His name was Henry David Thoreau. Born in 1817, Thoreau grew up in
Massachusetts. His Dad owned a pencil factory.
When Thoreau grew up, he worked for a time as a teacher, a writer, and a handyman, but he
couldn‟t quite find his place.
A friend of Thoreau‟s...Ralph Waldo Emerson...offered to let Thoreau build a little house on some
vacant land not far from where Thoreau‟s family lived, on the shores of Walden Pond.
I have been to Walden Pond, and I have seen the reproduction of Thoreau‟s little house. It was
tiny, with a bed, a table, two chairs, and a stove. That‟s all. There is wood stacked around the
back, and Thoreau had a little garden plot nearby where he grew his own food.
He didn‟t need a very big house because he saw the woods as his home, and as his textbook.
Every day he would walk in the woods, and notice things. The fish, the insects, the birds, the
plants...he noticed the way all of these things were a part of the forest, and the way in which they
were interdependent. He paid attention to the changes in the seasons. He listened for what fall
had to teach, but also winter, and summer, and spring.
He wrote about all that he learned in a book called “Walden: or Life in the Woods,” which a lot
of you have read, and which a lot of you will read someday. Thoreau is sometimes called „the
first ecologist.‟ The word „ecology‟ comes from the Greek word “Oikos” which means „house.‟ So
ecology is the study of our house, our planet, this beloved earth.
Thoreau was not very popular during his lifetime. He didn‟t sell many copies of his books, and he
didn‟t have a lot of friends. He even had a falling out with Mr. Emerson. But he was one of the
first people to lead us down a new path...and by „us‟ I mean Unitarian Universalists, because both
Thoreau and Emerson were Unitarians...but really, all people.
For you see, for hundreds of years, people had been taught to listen only to authority figures...to
priests, and teachers...and to read only one book...the bible. Along comes Thoreau and he says,
“the whole world is a book,” and “listen to your heart.”
People thought he was weird.
But all these years later, other people read his words, and hear something true, and important:
the earth is our home. We belong here. We need to learn from nature, and we need to listen
not just to authority figures, but to the still, small voice that speaks in our heart, and to all of
nature.
This is what Mary Oliver is trying to say in her poem, “Wild Geese.” It goes like this:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to crawl on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile, the world goes on.
Meanwhile, the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,
Over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
The world offers itself to your imagination,
Calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting,
Over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
So be it, and so may it be.
Reading from “Why I Wrote the Crucible” by Arthur Miller
The Crucible was an act of desperation. Much of my desperation branched out, I suppose, from a
typical Depression -- era trauma -- the blow struck on the mind by the rise of European Fascism
and the brutal anti-Semitism it had brought to power. But by 1950, when I began to think of
writing about the hunt for Reds in America, I was motivated in some great part by the paralysis
that had set in among many liberals who, despite their discomfort with the inquisitors' violations of
civil rights, were fearful, and with good reason, of being identified as covert Communists if they
should protest too strongly.
...
I am not sure what The Crucible is telling people now, but I know that its paranoid center is still
pumping out the same darkly attractive warning that it did in the fifties...Certainly its political
implications are the central issue for many people; the Salem interrogations turn out to be eerily
exact models of those yet to come in Stalin's Russia, Pinochet's Chile, Mao's China, and other
regimes. (Nien Cheng, the author of "Life and Death in Shang- hai," has told me that she could
hardly believe that a non-Chinese -- someone who had not experienced the Cultural Revolution --
had written the play.) But below its concerns with justice the play evokes a lethal brew of illicit
sexuality, fear of the supernatural, and political manipulation, a combination not unfamiliar these
days.
...
One thing more -- something wonderful in the old sense of that word. I recall the weeks I spent
reading testimony by the tome, commentaries, broadsides, confessions, and accusations. And
always the crucial damning event was the signing of one's name in "the Devil's book." This Faustian
agreement to hand over one's soul to the dreaded Lord of Darkness was the ultimate insult to
God. But what were these new inductees supposed to have done once they'd signed on? Nobody
seems even to have thought to ask. But, of course, actions are as irrelevant during cultural and
religious wars as they are in nightmares. The thing at issue is buried intentions -- the secret
allegiances of the alienated hearts always the main threat to the theocratic mind, as well as its
immemorial quarry.
Sermon The Economics of Witch Burning
On October 31st, modern Wicca around the world will gather to remember those killed
during “The Burning Times.” In the Middle Ages in Europe, practitioners of indigenous religion
were systematically rooted out, tortured, and killed, most often by burning at the stake. In the
beginning, the primary targets were village wise women, healers, and midwives. By the end,
entire villages (two that we know of near the French town of Triere) were killed, down to the last
child.
It‟s a little tricky to talk about the witch hunts. We don‟t know exactly how many women,
men, and children were killed over the 300 or so years they lasted, because most of the trials
were held in rural areas, and no records were kept. There are tens of thousands of documented
deaths, but historians have come up with estimate as high as 9 million. Because the vast majority
of those killed were women, the witch hunts have been called “The Women‟s Holocaust.” Because
they resulted in the destruction of indigenous religion, they have also been described as a process
of “Christianization” of the continent.
The stories and the evidence that have survived paint a pretty horrific picture. We see
evidence of incredible paranoia. Women who were on trial were stripped naked (so that they
couldn‟t sew spells into their clothing), shaved (so that they couldn‟t braid spells into their hair),
and forced to walk backwards or blindfolded (so that they couldn‟t give people „the evil eye.‟)
If someone accused you of being a witch, you were faced with two choices. You could be
tortured to death, or you could be tortured until you confessed, at which point you would be
executed. The Catholic church helpfully provided a handbook describing all of the different
methods of torture that would generate a confession. Torture devices such as the iron maiden, a
sarcophagus with dull spikes inside, thumbscrews and the rack gave us the expression „the third
degree,‟ for they were the third level of torture.
As I mentioned, women, and especially women of influence or property, were targeted
first. Laws were put into place that made it illegal to practice medicine without a college
education; and of course, women weren‟t allowed to enroll at the university. Healers and
midwives were constantly accused, convicted, and executed on charges brought by male
physicians trying to gain a foothold in society.
What many people don‟t realize is that the witch hunts, trials, and executions were a
hugely profitable enterprise, as well. There were fees that were paid to the accusers, and to the
people who arrested the so-called „witches.‟ The jailers got money, including additional fees
should the women want food and water. The torturers were paid, as were the executioners. By
the time the poor victim actually died, all of her assets would be liquidated and paid to the
(mostly) men who were orchestrating the entire thing.
If there were children, they went into the poor house, to be a source of free labor. Most
didn‟t make it to adulthood.
Of course, the witch hunts weren‟t the only source of suffering. These are the years when
plagues washed through Europe in waves. Food was scarce. Life was extremely hard for most
people.
All of these things were blamed on witches. This fed the people‟s fears and paranoia,
which in turn fed this profitable industry. By the end of the 17th century, there weren‟t many
women left who owned property of their own; and there were laws in place to keep it that way.
The witch hunts served to systematically strip wealth, influence and power from the people
and especially the women who were killed and channel it into the theocracy, the hierarchy of the
church.
Not a very fun time to be alive.
When I was in Europe on pilgrimage last fall, I remember standing in the crypt where
hundreds of years of Protestant priests had been buried, and feeling as if they were my spiritual
ancestors. These wise women, who spent their lives tending to the health and well being of their
people, they are my ancestors, too, and it feels right to acknowledge them, and to mourn them.
This continent, of course, didn‟t escape the witch craze completely. From 1692-1693, over
150 people were arrested and imprisoned in a witch hunt that is commonly referred to as the
Salem Witch Trials. This is the story Arthur Miller retells in his play The Crucible.
It started with some sort of weird sickness that came over some young girls. Some people
have theorized it might have been food poisoning. The girls accused a servant and a couple of
other women of bewitching them, and the ball was rolling.
As I said, by the time it was over, over 150 people had been arrested and imprisoned.
Luckily, not all of the people arrested were brought to trial. 26 went to trial in the Court of Oyer
and Terminer in Salem Town. All were convicted. The Superior court heard 31 cases, but offered
only 3 convictions. Altogether, 29 people were convicted of felony witchcraft. Nineteen of them
(fourteen women and five men) were hanged. Giles Corey was crushed to death by stones as
they were attempting to get him to confess.
Nathaniel Hawthorne‟s grandfather, John Hathorne, was one of the trial judges, and in
fact, the only one who never repented of his actions. Nathaniel added a „w‟ to his name because
he was so ashamed of his ancestor.
Another judge, Samuel Sewell, had a change of heart just a few years after the trials had
ended. His son, Sam Jr., read a passage from the bible in church one day, Matthew 12:7: “If ye
had known what this meaneth, I would have mercy and not sacrifice, ye would not have
condemned the guiltless.”
Sewell publicly accepted the blame for his actions, as well as acknowledging his shame,
and spent the rest of his life making up for it. He changed his opinion of Native Americans, even
taking some into his home, and then paying for their education at Harvard University. He also
was the author of the first anti-slavery tract published here in the New World.
Again, it wasn‟t a very fun time to be alive. There had been a loss of crops, and most
families had a lot of mouths to feed. People were going hungry, and everybody had to work
hard to keep warm and fed through the long, hard New England winters.
And again, some of the accusers had financial motivations. Neighbors accused neighbors
in hopes of co-opting their land and passing it on to their descendants.
Witch hunts begin when people are in pain and scared and somebody encourages them
to blame a particular identity group. The persecutors then systematically engage in the
destruction of the people they have made into the „enemy‟, the feared other, and when they
discover that they benefit financially from persecution, they start actively hunting for new
„witches,‟ regardless of whether or not their victims are ACTUALLY part of the identity group
originally targeted. Those who stand up for the victims become associated with them, and so
make themselves vulnerable to attack.
This combination of identity politics and fear frequently gets people to act against their
own self interest. After all, wasn‟t it in the best interest of those medieval villagers to preserve
knowledge and people who had skills for healing? Throw greed into the mix, the chance for
short-term economic gain, and all hell breaks loose.
In a collection of essays edited by Cynthia Arnason and William Zartman called
Rethinking the Economics of War: The Intersection of Need, Creed, and Greed, experts on
various world conflicts analyze them to determine which factors make conflicts particularly difficult
to resolve.
Conflicts that begin out of some genuine need--for example freedom, economic justice,
religious freedom, health or safety-- intensify when creed comes into play—alliances are forged
based on ideological and/or theological identity—and then become entrenched as greed kicks
in—people discover that there is a potential to gain additional wealth by engaging in the
conflict.
Pretty much every lasting conflict has a combination of these three factors. In other words,
war has become a witch hunt.
Now in addition to the witch hunts that targeted actual witches, which I described above,
we can think about the persecution of Jews as a witch hunt. The story was that there was a Jewish
conspiracy to steal wealth from the gentiles. When things went wrong, there were pogroms, and
eventually, the Holocaust. In China, the cultural elites were targeted as “witches.” In the 1950‟s
here in the U.S., it was the communists.
These days, we have the Jihadists who see Westerners, and especially Americans, as the
source of all evil. And then we have the so-called „culture wars‟ here at home: this bizarre belief
that all of the challenges we are facing are the result of God being angry at this country because
we are an increasingly secular society. Some people honestly believe that there is a liberal,
homosexual agenda to try to erode so-called „family values‟ and threaten traditional marriage.
I actually got to debate someone who believes that, just this past week, in a forum hosted
by the League of Women Voters. He argued that Referendum 71, which allows same-sex and
senior couples who are registered as domestic partners certain basic rights, if passed, will
engender God‟s wrath and destroy the family. He believes that Gays and Lesbians are going to
sneak into our schools in order to indoctrinate children into „the homosexual lifestyle.‟ And he
believes that we could fix everything that is wrong in our country if we went back to biblically
based society...to a theocracy.
He quoted a fair bit of scripture, much of it mistranslated and all of it out of context, but I
kept thinking about this passage, in Matthew 7:16: “Ye shall know them by their fruits.” Beliefs
like my opponent‟s led a man to walk into a UU congregation in Tennessee and start shooting.
The beliefs of the people in the congregation led them to put themselves in between the shooter
and the innocent children who were leading the service that day.
The witch hunt mentality typically grows out of a potent combination of fear and greed.
The best way to counteract it is to govern our own hearts. We need to watch ourselves, because
blaming other people for complicated or painful situations is a pretty normal thing to do.
For example, my personal candidate for the antichrist is Karl Rove. I would like to blame
him for the unholy alliance between big business and conservative Christianity that is poisoning
our political system today. There‟s someone I wouldn‟t mind seeing burned at the stake.
We are all vulnerable to this kind of thinking. What we need to recognize is that this
tendency leads to ongoing conflict. It is up to us to find another way.
First of all, can we accept that suffering, conflict, messiness, and multiple ways of
understanding the world are all a part of the human condition? Can we simply allow things to be
what they are? No one person or group needs to be at fault.
Can we also learn from Judge Sewell? It is also human nature to group people into „us‟
and „them.‟ Judge Sewell saw how dangerous this practice was, and made it his practice to get
to know people as people. He welcomed „them‟ into his home, and found out just how much he
had in common with his fellow human beings, regardless of their race or background. He realized
that Native Americans deserved an education, and that African slaves deserved to be free.
Can we not only avoid blaming others, but also avoid blaming ourselves unfairly? It is most
often our own feelings of shame that send us looking for scapegoats. Can we work together for a
blame-free, shame-free view of ourselves and our world?
Above all, we must tend to what Arthur Miller referred to in the reading as “the secret
allegiances of our hearts.” Can we feel, deep down, our allegiance to all people, regardless of
their age, race, gender, sexual orientation, or political or religious point of view?
The curriculum that the children are working with this year is called “Creating Home,” and
one of the units encourages them to see their hearts as homes. What do we want to invite into our
heart-homes? And what are the things to which we need to “Shut de Door?” Who or what is the
devil we are trying to keep out?
Let us shut the door to blame and shame, to hatred and paranoia, to greed, and violence,
and that hankering to be in control, to have power over others.
Let us open the door and invite in that radical notion that we are connected to all
people...even Karl Rove.
In her poem “Making the House Ready for the Lord, Mary Oliver writes:
Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but
Still nothing is as shining as it should be
for you. Under the sink, for example, is an
uproar of mice—it is the season of their
many children. What shall I do? And under the eaves
and through the walls the squirrels
have gnawed their ragged entrances—but it is the season
when they need shelter, so what shall I do? And
the raccoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard
while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow;
what shall I do? Beautiful is the new snow falling
in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly
up the path, to the door. And still I believe you will
come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox
the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know
that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,
as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.
Let us open the doors of our heart wide. Let us say, “Come in fox and sparrow and lost dog and
lost souls. Come in God, come in mystery, come in feelings of awe, come in grace. Come in
peace. Come in love. Come in hope. Come in joy. Come in, and stay awhile.”
We don‟t have to be good, or clean. We don‟t have to be rich or powerful. We don‟t
have to be right, or pure, to be holy. We just have to choose love over fear.