Puritanism in the Boiling Isles Part 3: Puritanism in Practice
Done, done, done, done, done!
Part 1:
💬 0 🔁 2 ❤️ 12 · Puritanism in the Boiling Isles, but Not How You’d Expect · Guess who’s been doing historical/religious analyses again? I
Part 2:
💬 0 🔁 1 ❤️ 7 · Puritanism in the Boiling Isles Part 2: The Origins of Puritanism and Puritan Theology, and its Impacts · I thought this wa
One quick aside before starting: I mentioned back in Part 1 that I would eventually talk about John Foxe, the “Book of Martyrs” guy, and a big reason why the Puritans didn’t burn people. I decided to cut it. It wasn’t as relevant. I was simply surprised by how much I kinda liked the actual guy, and he reminded me of Luz in a few key ways. I don’t like what was done with his book, but he didn’t have control of that. In his time, his focus was on convincing people that stake burnings were pretty awful. Which, fair.
Part 3 is focused on what Puritanism, specifically New England Puritanism, actually looked like, and how we can see that reflected in the Boiling Isles. My decision to cut Foxe was because he was a contemporary of Calvin, well before the New England colonies.
To understand what New England was really like, one event early in its history shaped Puritan society more than any other, so much so that many other famous events, including the Salem Witch Trials, can be linked back to it. That event, or series of events, is known as the Antinomian Controversy.
This retelling is going to be pretty heavily abbreviated to details I find relevant to this discussion. I have a more thorough discussion here:
💬 0 🔁 0 ❤️ 0 · Introduction: So Why are You Writing the Antinomian Crisis into your Owl House fanfic anyway? · As I’ve mentioned before, I
A Witch Hunt With No Witches
I would like you to know that Phillip and Caleb did not grow up in the worst place to grow up Puritan (unless you're like me and you're writing them moving to Connecticut later). Connecticut was markedly more tolerant than Massachusetts Bay.
It's all John Cotton's fault.
The Great John Cotton Conspiracy
John Cotton was a Puritan minister who left England in 1634 and began teaching at the First Church of Boston. He had OPINIONS, and was unafraid to use his considerable influence to push them on others. The ministers considered the “fathers” of both Connecticut and Rhode Island would cite conflict specifically with John Cotton as a reason for their decision to establish new colonies.
Thomas Hooker, who founded the Connecticut River colony, isn’t important here. His conflict was over voting access. He thought things should be slightly more democratic.
Roger Williams, the founder of Providence Plantations, is an interesting case study. He repeatedly got in trouble in Massachusetts. He took a job at the church in Salem—yes, THAT Salem—after he angered authorities in Plymouth by questioning the legality of their charter, specifically the lack of payment to the indigenous people there. He also got in trouble for preaching the wrong things, like tolerance. He believed that the colonial government shouldn’t be punishing “sins of conscience,” i.e. keeping the Sabbath or even requiring the populace to be Christian in the first place. He was generally fine with the beliefs themselves; he took issue with their enforcement.
John Cotton adamantly disagreed, and was involved in the conflict that prompted Williams’ exit from Massachusetts. Williams ran away in the middle of a blizzard right before he was supposed to stand trial. This isn’t relevant; it’s just badass.
John Cotton was also a massive hypocrite. You see, at the same time as he was harassing Williams and Hooker, he was preaching his own unorthodox message. He preached a message of free grace over legalism. If you recall two of the prior points—the “unlimited grace” of Calvinism versus the concept of sanctification—Cotton focused on grace. It wasn’t technically inconsistent with Puritan beliefs, but the majority of the ministers in New England placed far more emphasis on sanctification.
Cotton preaching the message was unproblematic. He was popular, a 17th century celebrity pastor. However, a member of his congregation, one who followed him specifically to New England, was, with Cotton’s encouragement, holding in-home Bible studies discussing these things. The issue was that said person was a woman, Anne Hutchinson.
Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History
Hutchinson’s Bible studies grew incredibly popular, attended even by the eventual governor of the colony, Henry Vane the Younger. Vane is important because he was the primary source of Hutchinson’s political support. Additional ministerial support was provided by Hutchinson’s brother-in-law, Reverend Samuel Wheelwright, whose sermons were considerably more fiery than the generally measured Cotton’s.
Hutchinson and Wheelwright were both quite outspoken in their opinions, including disagreeing vehemently with the legalistic teachings of other ministers. The other ministers couldn’t tolerate the pushback, particularly Hutchinson’s. Wheelwright preached in a small community about 10 miles out of Boston, but the First Church in Boston, where Cotton preached, was the preeminent church in the colony. Did I mention Hutchinson was a woman?
She and her supporters were deemed “antinomians,” or “against the law.” Their viewpoint was portrayed as one that would cause the colony to fall into chaos. Refer back to the discussion on sanctification. For the Puritans, the idea was basically a form of behavioral control, and focusing on salvation by grace was a threat to that. Hutchinson and Wheelwright saw the focus on legalism as explicitly anti-Biblical.
Much of Hutchinson’s ire was focused on the lead minister of the First Boston church, John Wilson. His ego could not handle a woman criticising him, and it especially couldn’t handle that much of his congregation was agreeing with her. As the church authorities tried to figure out how to deal with the rising tensions, he trash talked his own congregation. Members of his congregation, led by Governor Vane, demanded he step down. They were ameliorated by Wilson delivering a very conciliatory speech. It wasn’t to last. It didn’t actually solve the problem.
Massachusetts Pulls a Fascism
Colony officials called for a day of prayer and fasting to deal with the controversy. Cotton invited Wheelwright to preach in the afternoon that day, and the sermon he gave was, to the other Massachusetts ministers, less passionate, more incendiary. Additionally, when Connecticut asked for reinforcements in the Pequot Wars, congregants in Boston refused to sign up because John Wilson was going to be the expedition's chaplain. This was largely attributed to Hutchinson’s influence.
The Pequot Wars are otherwise irrelevant to this discussion, but they do provide a potential model for Belos’ genocidality.
Things had officially escalated beyond the authorities’ control, and the conservatives among the ministers and the General Court determined the free grace movement needed to be destroyed. One of the first actions taken was trying and convicting Wheelwright for what boiled down to “you said mean things about us and we didn’t like it.” The Boston congregation found this unconscionable, and Vane and others got many of the most influential men in the Boston church to sign a petition protesting Wheelwright’s conviction.
Governor Vane was a problem. He was by far the most effective at obstructing the conservatives on the Court from complete control. So shenanigans were pulled in the next election to minimize the influence of voters in Boston. Vane and the other two magistrates who supported Hutchinson and Wheelwright lost re-election.
John Winthrop, now governor, immediately enacted a law preventing new people from settling in Massachusetts Bay without Court approval, a move explicitly intended to prevent the so-called Antinomians from adding more people to their numbers. Henry Vane returned to England in disgust soon thereafter.
Hutchinson stood trial in November and was convicted. In order to remove any possible support from the Court, the Boston deputies who had signed the petition were removed. And, because things weren’t fascistic enough, following her conviction that same petition was used to disarm those who signed unless they recanted and disavowed Hutchinson.
If you wondered what John Cotton was doing through all this, he was there, somewhat defending Hutchinson, but more defending himself. It was Hutchinson’s church trial (the civil one sentenced her to banishment; the church one determined if she would be excommunicated as well) that displayed his true colours. He folded, and he would be the one to elucidate her true crime. There were men attending her Bible studies, and mixed-gender events like that were almost inevitably going to lead to an orgy. Maybe somebody should have said something about this when the governor was attending? Cotton refused to acknowledge his role in any of this, and would spend the remainder of his life picking fights with Roger Williams and Thomas Hooker via pamphlet publication.
Boston and Salem were, at first, the places where you would be most likely to find dissenting opinions. The Antinomian Controversy put an end to that in a dramatic fashion. “Banned in Boston” was a joke that stuck around to the 20th century, and we all know what Salem was known for.
Societal Participation in both Puritan Communities and in the Boiling Isles
The Antinomian Controversy provided a model for how New England would deal with dissent for decades. Belos grew up in its aftermath, and would have seen its impacts, and heard stories of those involved. This provided him a clear model for how to control the populace.
Puritan Ministerial Heterodoxy as Compared to Hexside
The Antinomian Controversy illuminated the supposed need for Puritan ministers to get on the same page regarding their teachings. As mentioned before, nothing that Cotton was preaching, or that Hutchinson was discussing, was inconsistent with Puritan theology. It was the inevitable result of a society created by non-conformists who really wanted everyone else to conform to their particular brand of non-conformity.
One of the first official actions taken was calling a meeting with all the prominent ministers in the colony, with the primary goal being to reach consensus regarding the theology being preached in the colonies. And guess what—they couldn’t! They met again two months later, and still failed in their goal. This was where John Wilson would trash talk his own congregation. They would find consensus in a third meeting, although that consensus was less genuine agreement, more a proverbial middle finger to Hutchinson specifically.
This conflict was inevitable. Two different people reading the same thing and interpreting it in different ways is the natural outcome of the readers being two different people, with different life experiences. However, Christian sects in general, Calvinistic ones in particular, do not nurture a culture of debate. The idea of total depravity does not allow for different people approaching the same topic in good faith. If people can only be good because of God, then disagreement between two of His saints should be impossible. No, one person is right, and one person is of the Devil. People disagreeing on fundamental theology was a threat to their utopian community. It was vitally important for the people teaching people how to interpret the Bible be teaching the same thing.
The primary purpose of these meetings was to ensure consistency in messaging from the pulpit, but the Antinomian Controversy did impact the education of the children as well. Philemon Pormont, the man who established the first formal school in the colonies, lost his job over this. He wasn’t even a signer of the petition, but he was close enough connected that he was no longer trusted with teaching the youth.
Which brings us to Hexside. We see in Hexside’s introduction a need for that informational control. Belos’ messaging relies heavily on people sticking to their assigned roles, and that extended to choosing a coven before you actually choose a coven. From a cynical perspective, this makes sense. When you are pigeonholed down that route from a very young age, you will be less likely to question it. Additionally, limiting how much magic people are allowed to learn to all but those who have proved themselves most loyal to Belos provides an additional protective measure.
Willow’s skill in plant magic had to be prodigious for Principal Bump to switch her to that track. It is unclear if he would have switched her beforehand if she had simply asked. Dabbling in other forms of magic would usually get you in the Detention Track. The existence of the Detention track in general is telling. You can almost see that as the equivalent of excommunication or banishment (more on those later), but at the youth level. If you aren’t going to abide by the rules, you need to be ostracized from the community.
We don’t get a lot as far as how conformity to Boiling Isles standards of education is enforced at the administrative level. Belos mentions funding in “The First Day” and an indication of some level of additional consequences, but we don’t get specifics. This is understandable for a kids’ show, but it does leave some things open-ended. It likely is not funding-exclusive. St. Epiderm appears to be a private school, therefore less impacted by funding limits, but they still have the standard single-track indicators in their uniforms.
This is entirely speculation, but the proximity of the events of the show to the Day of Unity probably impacted how much Belos cared. If these kids were going to be graduating before the Day of Unity, and getting out into the wider community, the impact of multi-tracking would actually be relevant. As far as Belos is concerned, the only thing that changes is the strategy for marking the students.
The Politicization of Suffering and Eda's Curse
One of the big purposes of religion in general is to provide answers to life's big questions. A universal one is an explanation for human suffering. If you were to ask the Puritans, it’s because they did something wrong.
Trigger warning for pregnancy loss and birth defects.
The Antinomian Controversy featured this in a very disturbing way. The most immediate came to light following Anne Hutchinson’s church trial, which resulted in her excommunication. She was alone and emotionally beaten down. One friend braved the wrath of the Puritan mob to support her—Mary Dyer.
The wrath was immediate. Dyer had suffered a stillbirth less than 6 months prior; the baby had the sort of visible abnormality that was incompatible with life. Anne Hutchinson was a midwife, and she was at the birth. Understanding the superstitions of the time, not to mention her own church standing, Anne, with John Cotton’s counsel, decided with the others present to bury the infant in secret with as much dignity as they could manage.
It was not completely secret, however. When Dyer walked out of the Boston Meetinghouse with Hutchinson, someone called out, “Isn’t she the woman with monstrous birth?” The fact that phrase is the one remembered says all you need to know about how news of the stillbirth was treated. It was seen as confirmation that God was displeased with Hutchinson and her followers.
This was not the first such occurrence of the Puritans politicizing tragedy, and it would not be the last. Dyer’s stillbirth would follow her for the rest of her life, which we know because the full extent of her historical significance came later. She converted to Quakerism and was eventually killed for it as one of the “Boston Martyrs.” She went to that death willingly. Massachusetts authorities wanted to give her a reprieve, but she refused, refusing to be used as the Puritans’ political pawn. News of her death was met with outrage in England, which led to greater establishment of Royal control, one key factor that led to the Salem Witch Trials.
When I said it all links back to the Antinomian Controversy, I meant it.
You can see in Dyer’s story, and similar other cases, the way Eda’s curse was treated as a propaganda tool following her reprieve when she was to be petrified. Obviously Eda wasn’t going to do the same as Dyer. First off, it’s a kids’ show. Second, it would have been disrespectful to the sacrifices Luz and Lilith made. Third, it wouldn’t have affected the propaganda.
Eda’s curse itself was definitely used in Belos’s messaging the same way Dyer’s stillbirth was used by the Puritans. And her reprieve was used the same way the same Puritans had intended to use Dyer’s.
Belos’ own words lay it out clearly:
“Children of the Isles. The Titan has told me to spare the Owl Lady's life, but in return, her curse will strip away all her powers. Let her monstrous form be a lesson about the dangers of wild magic.”
We see the effects of this further in Season 2. Eda was a wanted criminal with a bounty on her head. We see in “Separate Tides” that is no longer the case. We see in “Eda’s Requiem,” that it goes one step further. No coven wants her. It is more useful for Belos’ messaging for her to be seen in public as a warning against wild magic. Not that he intended for her to not get caught in the draining spell. But he could put that off until the end, only sending scouts in to take The Owl House a week before the Day of Unity.
Banishment and the Conformatorium
The appearance of the Conformatorium in the very first episode is a clear indicator of what sort of world Luz has found herself in. This is a world with strange monsters everywhere. Is some guy eating his own eyes weird enough to prevent participation in society? It’s his body; he isn’t hurting others. The reveal that the place was being run by an actual 17th century Puritan added considerable context.
Puritans were legalistic in more than just sermons. They did care a lot about things at least appearing legal, which is counter to the “angry mob witch trial” view of people.
They were quite aware of how things would look if they went around executing people for any little thing, hence why they tried to give Mary Dyer a reprieve. Samuel Wheelwright was also an interesting case of this. I already mentioned his trial, where he was convicted on a nonsense charge. Wheelwright himself raised the stakes at sentencing.
The Court and the Ministers threw around words suggesting that Wheelwright’s sermons were heretical. Wheelwright called their bluff. He told them that if his words were heresy, then sentence him to death, but he would appeal to the king. This happened around the same time Henry Vane returned to England, and Vane’s dad was on Charles’ privy council. It was not an idle threat.
The Court caved. His sentence was banishment from the colony. This was not a surprise, and he and his closest supporters had been making plans to leave anyway. They founded Exeter, New Hampshire.
Anne Hutchinson was also banished. She, her husband and their closest supporters, including Mary Dyer and her husband, would found the colonies on Aquidneck Island (aka Rhode Island).
Speaking of Rhode Island, if you recall Roger Williams: also banished. He attempted to establish another colony just on the other side of the border—he had even negotiated payment with the Wampanoag for it—before Plymouth sent a “friendly” letter reminding him he was technically in their jurisdiction. He then set up shop in Providence after negotiating with the Narragansett. Williams cared a lot about that. His connections with the Narragansett were why Hutchinson and her followers ended up on Aquidneck.
In summary, the Puritans weren’t going to automatically kill you if you didn’t conform in the way they expected, but that didn’t mean that they wanted you around. So they’d banish you. That wouldn’t be an option in the Boiling Isles, however, because of the limits of the world itself.
Still, petrifying people for small crimes like writing literal food porn isn’t going to work out in the long run. Belos can’t risk a popular uprising before the Day of Unity. Even if he isn’t subject to anybody back in England, his plan relies on the merciful father-figure imagery. But he can’t have them just running free. To quote Warden Wrath, “No place for [them] in society if [they] can’t fit in.” To better explain it, Belos couldn’t have people bucking the norm around because that might tell everybody else that it is okay for them to buck the norm. But where would those miscreants go if there was nowhere to banish them?
The answer is the Conformatorium.
Examining Belos' Own Words
To tie everything together, it might be useful to compare Belos’ own words against the things we’ve learned. I already quoted his speech in “Young Blood, Old Souls,” which pertained to one specific point. The following quotes help us get a bigger picture.
I will address these chronologically.
From the first speech Belos gives in Hollow Mind:
“Fellow Citizens, we are born into chaos. Our lives anger the Titan.”
There is a clear tie-in to the Calvinistic idea of Total Depravity. Everyone is chaotic (bad, as Belos presents it) from birth. Total chaos is the default state, and that default state makes the Titan, or God, as Belos is presenting him, angry.
“My own family has been hurt by the darkness of wild magic.”
The rest of this speech is less directly related to Puritan ideas, but they This line is a natural extension of the messaging that suffering is punishment from God. If you can spin a good conversion story out of it, you can use your own tragic past for clout points. It’s a common strategy of religious grifters throughout history.
“I have been shown the healing light. It shines in nine hues!”
Light is a common theme in the Bible, particularly Jesus’ parallels. The idea of being a “light shining among men” was at the origin of the establishment of the New England colonies. They wanted to be a city on a hill. Light being a go-to metaphor for Belos, from this perspective, makes sense.
“The wild witches! They have found me, run!”
One well-known Bible verse is “Blessed are you when men shall persecute you.” Interpreting anything possibly perceived as persecution as validation is standard across Christianity. Yes, Belos is lying, but it does explain why he thinks this would better make his case.
From the second of the speeches in Hollow Mind:
“Look at what wild magic has done to your city.”
This is an extension from the previous speech. Suffering and disaster are indicative of God’s judgment. Belos has taken it a step beyond the lie that his own family’s suffering was caused by wild magic; now it is seen in the world as well.
“Now imagine what it is doing to you.”
One’s outward blessings or misfortune are manifestations of the state of their soul.
“A city can rise from the ashes, but a soul…”
This line is evocative of the idea of sanctification. Good deeds, when under God’s grace, purify the soul; bad deeds corrupt it.
“I can make your magic pure again, as the Titan intended!”
Here we see another case of Belos having a Puritan-style God complex. This line reflects the Calvinistic idea of atonement, something that only Christ can do.
From his words to the Head Witches in “Hunting Palismen”
“The larger your covens grow, the more power we will have to unite our realms, where the worthy shall inherit a utopia free of wild magic”
This line, and the similar, lengthier speech in “Follies at the Coven Day Parade,” cements my personal headcanon that the Belos internalized his own Day of Unity messaging as a spin on the sort pre-millennialism that Puritans subscribed to. Uniting the realms where the worthy will inherit a utopia free of wild magic sounds almost exactly like Christ bringing his kingdom to earth where the faithful will reign in a utopia free of sin. Belos being a cult leader is commonly accepted among the fandom, but it’s lines like this that make it crystal clear that he is a Puritan cult leader.
Conclusion - Was the choice of “Phillip” intentional?
Hopefully at this point, I have more than driven home my point that the anti-Puritan messaging in the Owl House is far deeper than opposing “witch-hunting.” If you know the theological and historical background of the movement, you can see a lot of it in, not only the actually Puritan characters, but in the show’s themes, and even the way the Boiling Isles itself is presented.
To wrap things up, I would like to tell you a Bible story. There are two people named “Phillip” in the Bible. One of them is one of Jesus’ disciples, but I’m not talking about him. The one I find interesting is Phillip the Evangelist.
Acts 8:26-31, 35-36, 38-39 (NRSV)
26 Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go [… ] to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” […]
27 Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship
28 and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah.
29 Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.”
30 So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading […]. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?”
31 He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Phillip to get in and sit beside him
[…]
35 Then Phillip began to speak, and starting with this scripture he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.
36 As they were going along the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”
38 He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Phillip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Phillip baptized him.
39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Phillip away; the eunuch saw him no more and went on his way rejoicing.
To summarize, the Biblical Phillip met a major figure in the Ethiopian government, who was reading the Bible. Phillip and he had a Bible study, where Phillip explained the Christian interpretation of the passage. The Ethiopian converted to Christianity, and asked to be baptized.
Traditionally, this is the reason given for why Ethiopia is majority Christian. The eunuch returned home and brought Christianity with him. Ethiopian Orthodox is one of the oldest Christian sects, predating even Roman Catholicism, which is not something I was taught. People stopped caring when there weren’t people they could imagine as white involved. In the white evangelical version of the tale, the focus is entirely on Phillip. Also, there is a bit of covert racism, because heaven forbid white people give an African country credit for something they purportedly valued.
Were Dana Terrace and the writers thinking of this Phillip when they gave him the name? Maybe, maybe not, but he did bring an awful lot of the Puritan mindset to the Boiling Isles.
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And that’s that! I’m tempted to turn this into a video essay, as well as that “Not About the Witches” essay, but that’s a monster of its own.
