ACTIVITY 6 BLESSED AND BEDEVILED W&I pp. 156-165
1. In "Blessed and Bedeviled," author Helen Mondloch returns to a time and place in America when people believed that God directed every earthly event.
a. List the names of the New England states. Locate Salem, Massachusetts; New Haven, Connecticut; and the rest of the New England states.
b. To what extent do you think that changes in our society result from the change in God’s role in the secular community?
c. How has the perception of the role of God in the affairs of man changed since the seventeenth century?
2. Why does the author say that the following words from one of Governor Winthrop’s sermons "resound with poignant irony"?
We shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people … upon us; so if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and to cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story … through the world.
3. The belief that the greater the potential for saints and blessings, the greater the potential for devils and heresies, smacks as much of superstition as religion.
a. Does this idea reflect the Puritan ethic?
b. What is the role of each in your own life?
c. Do you think that people usually fear that great fortune will be balanced by great misfortune?
4. When, in 1647, a spectral ship reportedly appeared in New Haven harbor, the author describes the crowd as "ecstatic." In what ways might that word be understood both to describe the crowd and to explain the phenomenon?
5. What are two of the plausible explanations Mondloch offers for the fits and convulsions suffered by the girls who began accusing witches in Salem?
6. Referring to the McCarthy hearings and what Richard Dorson calls "the neurotic intensity of the New England witch scare," the author warns about "those among us who boldly stake their claim to the mind of God." What other examples of evil done in the name of God’s will can you suggest?
