{"id":6617,"date":"2006-08-04T01:18:16","date_gmt":"2006-08-04T01:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/witch-hunt.html"},"modified":"2006-08-04T01:18:16","modified_gmt":"2006-08-04T01:18:16","slug":"witch-hunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/witch-hunt.html","title":{"rendered":"Witch-hunt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yale historian John Demos (raise your hand if you read "A LIttle Commonwealth" in college!) <\/em> writes in the WSJ about attempts to posthumously (very posthumously) rehaibilitate an accused witch.<\/a><\/p>\n

The piece takes a rather interesting turn in its last third. A meditation, with a startling opener:<\/p>\n

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With the so-called Enlightenment<\/strong> of the later 18th century came a new view of the Almighty; in effect, His presence in human affairs was scaled back. Henceforth His role would be likened to that of a "watchmaker"–essential in "making" the system, to begin with, but since then fixed in a posture of distant oversight. At the same time, and as part of the same process, the Devil too was distanced; indeed, for many in the 19th century and thereafter he was no longer a credible figure at all. Under these altered circumstances, the premodern idea of constant, cosmos-wide, moral warfare–Good vs. Evil, God vs. Satan, with witches as front-line combatants–made less and less sense. Thus was old-style witchcraft squeezed out of American religious culture. <\/p>\n

Curiously, though, a new-style witchcraft has emerged in just the past few decades. Wicca is the name it usually claims for itself; and it does claim, too, the status of a religion. Its workings include: ecstatic communion with Nature and other intrinsic spiritual forces; "covens" of enthused believers making "good magic"; and the invocation of numerous benevolent gods (especially a "great Goddess"). Call it witchcraft with a smiling face. <\/p>\n

But was Grace Sherwood smiling as she broke the surface of the river? And were her accusers smiling as they stood closely by? Not a chance. For all of them the moment was literally "dread-ful": intense, darkly mysterious, laden with anxious foreboding. Would the Devil be there to hold her up? And what might God himself be planning, as he looked down on this, their most earnest effort to unmask his (and their own) worst adversaries? <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yale historian John Demos (raise your hand if you read "A LIttle Commonwealth" in college!) writes in the WSJ about attempts to posthumously (very posthumously) rehaibilitate an accused witch. The piece takes a rather interesting turn in its last third. A meditation, with a startling opener: With the so-called Enlightenment of the later 18th century…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nWitch-hunt - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/witch-hunt.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Witch-hunt - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yale historian John Demos (raise your hand if you read "A LIttle Commonwealth" in college!) writes in the WSJ about attempts to posthumously (very posthumously) rehaibilitate an accused witch. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}