Witchcraft accusations surface primarily in certain kinds of societies. Witchcraft requires proximity and rivalry. Where people live close to one another, where the means for negotiating conflict are unclear or weak, and where people routinely compete with their neighbors for vital social and material resources, witchcraft accusations are likely to flourish. By placing one's adversary at a disadvantage, witchcraft accusations provide one means of social control.[8]
Labels like "witch" and "witchcraft" or ("sinner" and "sin") reflect the values, anxieties, and power relations of particular societies. They may or may not indicate a person's moral guilt or innocence. And they certainly do not demonstrate that the witch or sinner is especially guilty in comparison with his or her neighbors. They do, however, reveal something about how the accused relates to the social order and concerns of their day.
This detour into witch accusations bears implications for the woman in Luke 7. Because labeling persons as witches involves complex social processes, those processes also reveal the core values and pressing concerns of societies. What lessons does the pattern of witchcraft allegations hold for a similar phenomenon: the labeling of sinners? By what processes do societies label people as sinners?
Accusations of sin often reflect other social agendas. Their roots may lie so deep as to prevent their observation. For example, the prominent Southern Baptist spokesperson Al Mohler recently articulated a new sin, "the sin of delaying marriage." Scripture makes clear, Mohler argued, that marriage is one of the primary means by which people grow in holiness. Mohler maintained that because men are called to lead, they should pursue that calling through marriage. There they can cultivate their leadership in their relations with their wives and children. "The longer you wait to get married," he argued, "the more habits and lifestyle patterns you will have that will be difficult to handle in marriage."[9]
It is unclear to me how the Bible specifies that people ought to marry early in life. Presumably, some have strong theological convictions that lead to this opinion. Yet we might also ask: What values are at stake for those who advocate early marriage and thereby stigmatize single adults? Here we might reflect for a moment on the political and religious divisions so prominent in the United States. The religious right insists that it represents traditional -- in their view, biblical -- family values. They support legislative action, even a constitutional amendment, to define marriage in a particular way. Visit a local Christian bookstore, and you will be amazed by the evangelical market for books on parenting and family life. Pay careful attention, and you will also find a movement within some evangelical circles to promote large families. Is the Christian right making babies to extend their political influence through coming generations? Evangelicals have long insisted that the Bible teaches people to avoid sexual intimacy until marriage. The longer people remain single, the more likely they are to engage in premarital sexual intimacy, perhaps distancing themselves from evangelical communities. In short, the invention of a new sin, the sin of delaying marriage, resonates with broader social stresses and political goals. This new sin represents an attempt to promote some social values -- large, patriarchal, sexually pure evangelical households -- over their alternatives.
We can learn quite a lot from witchcraft accusations and Christian right rhetoric. Labeling of sins and sinners demands a complicated process. It does involve the moral standards of particular communities. But labeling also reflects the stresses that threaten those communities, their struggles to define themselves or affect the social worlds they inhabit. The New England women accused as witches failed to conduct themselves as their community wished middle-aged women to behave. They experienced conflict with the younger generation of women, perhaps reflecting deeper stresses in New England social arrangements. Some probably had engaged in witchcraft -- some, at least, confessed to it -- but their accusations and convictions reveal how other forces made such charges both likely and deadly. In a similar fashion, the contemporary religious right upholds well-defined sexual standards. Some believe that the promotion of early marriage will foster those standards. But early marriage also relates to larger stresses within the political culture of the United States. On the one hand, the Christian right claims that it has attained significant influence in public affairs -- and it wants more. But on the other hand, the Christian right sees secularism as an ever-present threat, and sexuality as the ground on which the struggle for cultural power will be won or lost. Dig a little, and we will see it: deep roots sustain both witchcraft accusations and the sin of delaying marriage. So it is in every society.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In