Mary Dyer by Sylvia Shaw Judson – outside the Massachusetts State House, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Statue dedicated June 9, 1959. 

Image via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

Early in my career I worked at Earlham College, a Quaker college in Richmond, Indiana. On my way to teach in the upstairs gathering room used for classes at the Stout Meetinghouse, I walked by a statue of Mary Dyer, an early Quaker who was punished by hanging in 1660 in Boston, Massachusetts for her belief in religious freedom. Another bronze statue of Mary Dyer stands in front of the Massachusetts State House in Boston and a copy stands in front of the Friends Center in central Philadelphia. All of the Quakers I met at Earlham from around the world seemed like gentle, thoughtful, peaceful, and caring people, so the idea of hanging a Quaker felt like an oxymoron. Why would anyone hang a Quaker woman?

Mary Dyer was born in England in 1611. She was an American Puritan who later became a Quaker. Coming to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636, Mary and her husband William joined the Boston Church, the church of the Puritans (not the same as Pilgrims). 

At that time, as Jim Carnes writes in Us and Them: A History of Intolerance in America, “the Puritan Church governed all aspects of life in the colony. Church leaders dictated what people could wear and how they should behave, both in public and inside the home. The Old Testament was the foundation of civil law. Anyone convicted of violating one of the Ten Commandments was punished by hanging. Anyone who questioned the official faith was treated as a criminal. Women in Massachusetts were not even allowed to discuss a sermon, much less voice their own ideas about religion. Mary and William soon recognized in their own church and government the same intolerant spirit that had driven them out of England.” 

A woman’s place in the Puritan Church was, well, they had no place. Carnes notes that Mary kept an uneasy silence, but then she heard another woman speak—her neighbor, Anne Hutchinson. “Anne openly opposed the rigid authority of the Puritan church leaders. She believed that no church had the authority to govern a society. In her view, God spoke to everyone, male and female, and gave each individual the ability to discern right from wrong. Hearing Anne say these things out loud filled Mary with both relief and excitement, as if her own mind had suddenly been freed from a cage.” Anne held weekly religious meetings of likeminded folks which grew in popularity until John Winthrop himself set out to stop her. Winthrop, “a respected Puritan minister, was elected the [Massachusetts Bay] Colony’s first governor in 1631 and eventually served 12 annual terms in the position.” And it was Governor Winthrop who brought charges of slander against Hutchinson, who was banished from the Colony. “Many of her followers abruptly turned away from her. At the trial, she was banished from the colony. Knowing that the same thing could happen to her, Mary Dyer stepped to the front of the courtroom to take her friend’s hand. For Mary, there was no choice. She had risked her life before for the right to practice her faith, and she would do it again.”

That did not sit well with the Reverend Governor Winthrop. He feared that “a loosening of Church control would endanger not only the colony’s welfare but also its charter from the King.” Ah, the motive. Control. Power. Politics. Sadly, when Anne Hutchinson and her family were killed by Native Americans, the Reverend Governor proclaimed it the work of the Lord. Yet “Mary vowed to continue the struggle that her friend had begun, no matter what the consequences. She followed her conscience in defying the law and speaking out about her own convictions. Everyone, she said, had the right to believe and practice religion as he or she saw fit. In response to their efforts, a court banished Mary and William from the Bay Colony in 1638. They moved to Rhode Island and helped to found the settlement of Newport, where their six children were born. Thanks to the leadership of Roger Williams, the colony’s founder (and also the founder of the First Baptist Church of America), residents of Rhode Island enjoyed a religious freedom that did not exist in Massachusetts. Still, even in this liberal atmosphere, Mary Dyer felt that something was missing: the voices of women. Rhode Island’s independent churches were still run exclusively by men. Like her friend Anne Hutchinson, Mary viewed the separation of church and state as a principle worth dying for, and one whose benefits should encompass all people.” 

Mary felt the need to return to Boston, from whence she was banished. Quaker men who admitted to their faith “would have an ear cut off…Women received whippings for their first two offenses. The crime of blasphemy could get a person’s forehead branded with the letter ‘B.’” In the classic novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne titled “The Scarlet Letter,” the letter attached to the woman was an “A.” No letter was attached to the man. In Mary Dyer’s case, the letter was a “B,” for blasphemy, against the unbending, unwelcoming, and seemingly un-Godlike Puritan Church.

Some tried to talk Mary out of her stand against the clergy and the government, but it was in vain. Mary stood fast for religious freedom to exist. She stood for women to speak God’s word. She stood for the state not interfering in the freedom of religious expression. On June 1, 1660, she was led to the gallows for the beliefs she stood for, and this Quaker woman was hung to her death.

Carnes writes, “After he had removed the ladder, Edward Wanton, the hangman, walked over and vomited into Frog Pond. He went home and told his mother he had quit his job – ‘and now I’m going to become Quaker.’” The hangman’s reaction reminds of the centurion who crucified Jesus of Nazareth: “When the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, ‘Certainly this man was innocent.’” (Luke 23:47). The man who executed Mary Dyer, Edward Wanton, did become a Quaker and the Wantons later became one of the leading Quaker families in Rhode Island. Two of Wanton’s sons, William and John, and two of his grandsons, Gideon and Joseph Wanton, became governors of the Rhode Island Colony.

I no longer pass Mary Dyer’s statue every day, but its memories remind me vividly that…

• She died so that those who come after her could enjoy religious freedom and the separation of religion from government.
• She died so that everyone might express their religious faith openly.
• She died for women to proclaim the word of God and to stand up against authority.
• She died for the separation of church and state, and that the state may never impose only one religion – this in a day when Louisiana has passed legislation requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in public school classrooms, and several other states have proposed similar laws.

Ironically, in the days of the Puritans, it was the clergy and the religious leaders who stifled the freedom of religious expression and who persecuted those who deviated from their norms. Sadly, it was the clergy who sought the execution of Mary Dyer, not so different from how it was the religious leaders who sought the execution of Jesus of Nazareth. She spoke and stood against their narrow view of God’s Kingdom, and they killed her. But for Mary Dyer, the freedom of religious expression was worth dying for.