The Antinomian Trials

Puritan Mission.

In a colony like Massachusetts Bay, religious disputes could become legal problems. Although the church and the state were formally distinct from one another, only members of the church could vote or hold office, and the colony had been founded to promote a Puritan vision of the ideal community as a model for religious reforms back in England. The Puritans expected some debates in their community, but when disagreements went so far as to threaten the religious harmony of the colony, the dissenters could be seen not merely as folks with different points of view but as threats to the social and political order.

Covenant.

A few years after the colony's initial settlement a group of residents, whose leader was Anne Hutchinson, was tried for sedition. Hutchinson and her associates were accused of having criticized the colony's ministers...