Reasons For The Salem Witch Trials

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Salem Witch Trials What were the motivations for the Salem witch trials? The Trials that accused and killed so many innocent women and men. What we know about the trials is that there were religious, social, and economic factors involved. The Religious/Political factor was is the inability to explain certain events and to go outside their church beliefs and discipline. The Social factor was that they weren’t really a community, there failure to really know there neighbors and the economic factor was because of the difference in monetary income. All of these were reasons why the Salem Witch Trials occurred. The religious/Political factor was really the main reason for the accusations of witch craft. The religious side of the factor was…show more content…
Many people did not know each other and sometimes if a person does not make a good first impression on someone then there could be problems ahead between them and so when they see the person again then they could make a witch accusation to get back at them. They all had differences and some liked them and others didn’t. A person’s gender was also a social factor because they saw women with power and property as unacceptable. They believed that men were the leaders of the household and women as properties that were to do everything that a woman should do in the 1690s. Many of the accusers were men. Men who probably tried to put women in their places. Puritan society didn’t allow freedom of speech. It was within their society not to say anything bad about anything especially the church. Many of the witches who were accused were because of assaultive speeches against someone or church beliefs. It wasn’t seen as normal when someone spoke their mind, especially when it was something…show more content…
Surely there were poor and rich people and sometimes they wanted to screw with them because they were rich or poor. They probably envied the rich and damned the poor and more than likely they exchanged words and did evil acts upon each other. Documents explain that most of the persons accused were lower income people who were not high ranking members of society. They probably saw the poor as lazy people who didn’t want to make more money or become a high ranking member in the church and to them laziness is seen as an act of the devil. Some of the poor probably had to steal items to keep them afloat, whether it was food, money, or Valuable items and of course if you steal you are already breaking one of god’s rules and they know that you are the devil as the bible leads them to believe. The economic factor did have an impact but it wasn’t as big as the social and religious factor. In truth there were many more factors that contributed to the Salem witch Trials, although I believe they were farfetched. The most likely factor to contribute was the religious factor, which did not allow the puritans to explore ideas outside their church and bible. The social factor was their inability to be a whole community and to know their whereabouts of their neighbor s. The differences in income between them and their neighbors and the amount of taxes each paid took some toll
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