Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636-1641

by Michael P. Winship

Making Heretics is a major new narrative of the famous Massachusetts disputes of the late 1630s misleadingly labeled the "antinomian controversy" by later historians. Drawing on an unprecedented range of sources, Michael Winship fundamentally recasts these interlocked religious and political struggles as a complex ongoing interaction of personalities and personal agendas and as a succession of short-term events with cumulative results.


Previously neglected figures like Sir Henry Vane and John Wheelwright assume leading roles in the processes that nearly ended Massachusetts, while more familiar "hot Protestants" like John Cotton and Anne Hutchinson are relocated in larger frameworks. The book features a striking portrayal of the minister Thomas Shepard as an angry heresy-hunting militant, helping to set the volatile terms on which the disputes were conducted and keeping the flames of contention stoked even as he ostensibly attempted to quell them.


The first book-length treatment in forty years, Making Heretics locates its story in rich contexts, ranging from ministerial quarrels and negotiations over fine but bitterly contested theological points to the shadowy worlds of orthodox and unorthodox lay piety, and from the transatlantic struggles over the Massachusetts Bay Company's charter to the fraught apocalyptic geopolitics of the Reformation itself. An object study in the ways that puritanism generated, managed, and failed to manage diversity, Making Heretics carries its account on into England in the 1640s and 1650s and helps explain the differing fortunes of puritanism in the Old and New Worlds.

Genres: History, American History

344 pages, Hardcover

First published February 15, 2001

About the author

A specialist in the history of religion in colonial America, Michael Winship is professor of history at the University of Georgia, where he holds the E. Merton Coulter Chair.

Michael Winship's most recent book is Godly Republicanism: Puritans, Pilgrims, and Massachusetts' City on a Hill (Harvard UP, 2012), a Choice Academic Title of the Year for 2012. Previous books include Seers of God: Puritan Providentialism in the Restoration and Early Enlightenment (Johns Hopkins UP, 1996), Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636-1641 (Princeton UP, 2002), The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson: Puritans Divided (UP of Kansas, 2005) and, with Edward J. Larson, The Constitutional Convention: A Narrative History from the Notes of James Madison (Random House, 2005.) Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America is forthcoming with Yale University Press.

Recent articles include ''Freeborn (Puritan) Englishmen and Slavish Subjection: Popish Tyranny and Puritan Constitutionalism, c.1570-1606,'' English Historical Review 124 (2009), 1050-1074; ''Algernon Sidney's Calvinist Republicanism,'' Journal of British Studies 49 (2010), 753-773; ''Defining Puritanism in Restoration England: Richard Baxter and Others Respond to A Friendly Debate,'' Historical Journal 54 (2011), 689-715; "Straining the Bonds of Puritanism: English Presbyterians and Massachusetts Congregationalists Debate Ecclesiology, 1636–40," in Crawford Gribben, Scott Spurlock, eds. Puritans and Catholics in the Trans-Atlantic World 1600-1800 (Palgrave, 2015), pp. 89-111. A chapter on New England religion from the 1680s-1730s, "Congregationalist Hegemony in New England, from the 1680s to the 1730s," is in the Cambridge History of Religions in America, vol I (New York, 2012), and a chapter on the various early forms of English church establishments in the Americas, '' British America to 1662." is in the Oxford History of Anglicanism, vol. I (Oxford, 2017).

Reviews

[Carly · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author, Michael Winship, wrote this book, Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636-1641, as a close chronological narrative of the puritan colonization of the Massachusetts Bay colony and their free grace controversy. The author’s purpose is to exhibit the controversy as a political issue that arose through the different theological figureheads that had “short-term effects with cumulative results.”
The author proved their thesis by recreating a plausible story with the surviving documents remaining from the seventeenth century. Some of the elements of the story, such as the information presented about Anne Hutchinson, are not letters from her own hand because there are no primary documents available. Additionally, few documents detail an explanation of the free grace controversy. Therefore, some of the interpretation is speculative and inferential. Winship “intended to make a case that there are vital issues, personalities, and outcomes that have been unduly neglected in previous interpretations of the free grace controversy and to say something useful about how puritanism worked and failed to work.”
Winship uses an array of sources for his narrative to include memoirs, court documents, Cotton’s Treatise, and other scholarly secondary sources of previous interpretations of this period. He includes a very detailed notes section at the end of his book to describe what parts of the narrative are from primary sources or what is speculation based on lack of sources and the reasons why there is absent information.
A strength in Winship’s book Making Heretics would be the personal level analysis that he devotes to key figures from the Massachusetts Bay colony. He introduces the reader to five main influential leaders from the beginning: Winthrop, Cotton, Hutchinson, Wheelwright and Vane. He then goes into detail on their backgrounds, their beliefs and how they fit into the grand scheme of the new colony. He shows how each leader influences the politics, the other leaders, or the population of “weak Christians” that eventually led to turmoil. The author’s setup of these leaders feeds right back into his thesis and argument about how these individuals and their personalities created lasting results. Winship creatively utilized the sources available to back his argument. He took information written about these leaders or these leaders’ personal letters to create the full picture, even when there were gaps in primary source material.
A weakness in the work that could be confusing to the narrative is the author’s tangents on “what could have happened” in an alternative scenario. An example would be when Winship gives an alternative scenario on Anne Hutchinson on page 45 in the book. Instead of adding additional scenarios to a narrative, it is easier for a reader to follow along on the status quo, even if it is the author’s speculation/interpretation.
Overall, Winship’s book supported his thesis on how the free grace controversy was the result of politics, personal agendas and personalities of the theological figureheads of the Massachusetts Bay colony.

[Josh Howell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Informative, well-researched, but dry as dirt. I had serious difficulty staying interested when reading.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clear, concise overview of ferocious Protestanism that is generous in the way it recasts its heroes and villains. I read this book as preparation for a play I wrote about Anne Hutchinson and its information and second looks proved valuable to me as a history nerd and an artist.

[Lisette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating recasting of major and "minor" Puritan figures. Typical scholarly writing in that it can be dense and featuring a chalk-dry tone at times.