Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 39:2 (Spring 2025)
Article: More Than A Woman: Anne Hutchinson’s Testimony For The Holy Spirit
Author: Patrick Oden

PP 39:2 (Spring 2025) p. 24

More Than A Woman: Anne Hutchinson’s Testimony For The Holy Spirit

Patrick Oden

Patrick Oden is the Associate Dean for the School of Ministry and Christian Thought at Oklahoma Wesleyan University and is ordained in The Wesleyan Church. He is married to Amy, a worship leader. They have two kids, Vianne and Oliver, and live in Lake Arrowhead California.

The mid-1600s was a wild time in church history, much more than most people realize. With the changes in Europe and the newfound opportunities and challenges in the American colonies, there was a stirring of ecclesial discontent and rediscovery. Some of these new directions were quite unorthodox, while others can be called orthodox but not conventional. Among the latter, we can think of those like Roger Williams (1603–1683), George Fox (1624–1691), or Anne Hutchinson (1591–1643). Fox tells us a lot about himself, and we are privileged to be left with a significant amount of Williams's writing. The same is not true for Anne Hutchinson.1 Though she did not formally lead a movement, her influences continued in various ways and her insights on the Holy Spirit continued to be driving arguments for why women are so important to the ministry and life of the church. Given this, some may see Hutchinson as a proto-feminist in a time of supposed intense misogyny. Others may see her as an antinomian ranter rising up against an oppressive religious theocracy, an early seventeenth-century warrior who can speak into our times. The reality of her situation is more complex.2

Born Anne Marbury in 1591 into the family of an English cleric in Alford, Lincolnshire, she received a privileged education. After her marriage to William Hutchinson, the couple followed the preacher John Cotton, a leading English Puritan who unconventionally emphasized the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer. When Cotton emigrated to the British colonies in America in 1633, the Hutchinsons followed a year later and took up residence in Boston, part of the developing settlement of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England. Besides working as a midwife, Hutchinson began to assert herself in the religious sphere. She began hosting meetings for women in her home, where she would pick up on the sermons Cotton preached at church and expound them further. Soon, men, such as the governor of the colony, Henry Vane, began to attend these meetings. It is for the theological tenor of these activities that she was eventually taken to stand trial.

Puritan On Trial

As mentioned, Hutchinson did not leave did not leave substantive writings or teachings. Her only direct testimony is, in fact, literally a testimony! Her testimony to the ...