The Coming Witch Trials

It’s time to care for the community—not cleanse it

Everyone who died in the Salem Witch Trials was a Christian. Despite pop culture claims in Agatha All Along and Sabrina, there were no witch covens in Salem. Christians accused other Christians of being witches, but there were no actual witches. Some of the accused chose to die rather than save their lives by false confession. Mary Esty went to the gallows proclaiming that “the Lord above knows my innocency.” She asked the judges to stop the trials “not for my own life” but “that if it be possible no more innocent blood may be shed.” Still, Esty opted for wrongful execution, since the alternative was to break God’s law: “I dare not belie my own soul.” 

If there ever was a “Christian nation,” Puritan Massachusetts might be it. So how did it happen that a presumed nation of faithful Christians began executing innocent believers? How did some of them turn against others in their midst?  

This question is paramount in 2024, as calls for America to become a “Christian nation” once again sound across the political landscape. Satan and witchcraft are back. The QAnon movement claims that President Trump is a divine instrument working to unearth and destroy a satanic pedophile ring involving U.S. officials and movie stars—a satanic conspiracy just like the one in Salem. A Trump surrogate recruiting Christians to be poll watchers claims Harris used witchcraft to win her debate with Trump. In this moment, what can we learn from Salem? 

It is easy to blame Christianity for Salem. Yet Puritan Christians had ruled in Salem for a long time before the witch trials. Indeed, there had been only one execution for witchcraft in Massachusetts in the thirty years prior to 1692. I know: One execution for witchcraft is one too many. But the question remains: How did one execution morph into a witch panic virtually overnight? 

What happened in 1692 resulted from a shift in the laws of evidence. The government created a new court in 1692 that accepted as proof “spectral evidence”—that is, testimony from victims of witchcraft who claimed to see the “shape” or spectre of a witch who tormented them. The mere claim of seeing the spectre of a witch suddenly served as hanging evidence for the accused. It was “spectral evidence” that produced the famous claims of purported victims that “spectres” of witches harmed them. Based on this evidence, nineteen people were executed. 

Several of the purported victims later confessed that they had simply lied. Local clergy and other magistrates at the time questioned the procedures. If “specter testimony pass for evidence,” wrote Rev. William Milborne, then “the Innocent will be condemned.” In other words, it was not Christianity itself that brought about the Salem Witch Trials. Rather, it was a choice by some in power to install new rules about what was and was not true. They chose to accept rumor and lies as the price of cleansing their Christian community—and Christians died. 

Something similar is happening now. Ohio’s Haitian immigrants—a predominantly Catholic Christian community—have recently been targeted for the alleged crime of eating cats and dogs. This social media nonsense was pronounced as fact by J.D. Vance and repeated in the presidential debate by Donald Trump. It was not true. Town officials and Republican mayors investigated and said it was not true. Eventually, even Vance admitted the story was false, but that it was okay if he made things up—so long as it meant “addressing the suffering of the American people.”

Vance’s effort to stop suffering created, however, more suffering. Right-wing influencers and media personalities descended on Springfield, Ohio, searching for evidence to substantiate the made-up claim. They scoured the streets for interviews. The Haitian immigrant community—and the Haitians’ native-born American neighbors—were shaken and terrified, as influencers seeking to push division in the city roamed and hounded them. Many immigrants went into hiding. White citizens who spread the rumors publicly retracted their statements when they saw the damage, but it was too late. Bomb threats poured into the city. In the midst of it all, Vance—a Catholic dedicated to “biblical values”—said to the rumormongers: “Don’t let the crybabies in the media dissuade you, fellow patriots. Keep the cat memes flowing.”

The same thing happened in Salem: Lies and rumors flooded the community. Those who claimed to stand for God called for people to pay no attention to truth as they cleansed the community. In the process, Christians turned against one another. 

In Springfield, at least, local Christians are at work trying to repair the damage the Christians at the top of the GOP ticket had caused. Rev. Carl Ruby of the Central Christian Church invited Haitian neighbors to his service the Sunday after the debate: “Jesus is with us in truth,” he preached, “and the truth is that Haitians are not eating pets and geese in Springfield.” The church printed cards in Creole and English for distribution across the city: “I’m glad you are here. Christ loves you and so do I.”

The election of 2024 is not a struggle of good against evil. It is not even a struggle of truth against error. It is a choice between truth and playing pretend. Trump has repeatedly rehearsed rumors he heard on social media or made something up on the spur of the moment. Last week, he again told voters that Springfield’s Haitians were “eating other things, too, things they weren’t supposed to.”  Both he and Vance have refused to budge on the basic question of whether the president should tell Americans the truth or make up whatever he feels the truth ought to be. Vance has given himself permission to make up stories. Trump refused to appear on 60 Minutes interview because the show said they would fact-check his statements. Then he demanded CBS be shut down.

This is the sort of situation that poisoned Salem. Anger blinded Christians in power from stopping to examine if the rumors were true. But I pray every undecided voter will know this: Trump doesn’t really lie. He just makes things up. Anything that sounds plausible or drifts across his social media feed is fair game. Everything is fodder to further divide Americans into good guys (his allies) and bad guys (everyone else).

This approach drives his belief that he really won in 2020. He read things claiming he won, and early results on election night showed him ahead, so he decided he won. He has acted accordingly. The result was threats on election workers, the events of January 6, and his promise to prosecute people for 2020 once he is restored to power.

In some ways, this state of affairs is worse than a lie. A liar understands the truth and chooses to deny it. But Trump doesn’t really care about the truth. What is real for him is whatever furthers his grievance; any conspiracy is true if he finds it useful. Enemies abound and he wants them wiped out. Trump has already claimed that his internal enemies in America are more dangerous than China or Russia and “live like vermin” in America. He vows to use the military to remove the “enemy within.”

If restored to the presidency, Trump will array the power of the federal government against any and all of his perceived enemies.  And as Springfield demonstrates, Trump and Vance do not care if what they say is true. 

Salem did not fall because people believed in a literal devil, nor did it fall because of economic difficulties or religious enthusiasm. Rather, its tragedy was that the power of the state fell to men who cared more about cleansing the community than caring for it—men who cared more about perceived righteousness than truth. 

Adam Jortner is the Goodwin-Philpott Professor of History at Auburn University. He is the author of Audible’s anniversary series, The Hidden History of the Boston Tea Party  and, most recently, A Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom.

^{Image credit: Haitian Times}