I visited Salem, Massachusetts, in 2011 when the college sent me to a conference at Harvard. I had a more extended visit lately when attending a hobby convention in nearby Danvers, north of Boston.
Congregationalist preacher Adoniram Judson married Ann Hasseltine in Salem in 1812 and then sailed with her and the gospel to India. They were convinced en route of the propriety of immersion baptism and were baptized in Calcutta. The British government turned them aside—perhaps due to the War of 1812—so the Judsons went to Burma, spending their lives sharing Christ and translating the Bible into Burmese, a version still used and known as the Judson Bible.
Ann Judson died in Burma (now Myanmar) in 1826. The former Judson College in Marion, Alabama was named for her.
But regrettably, Salem is best known for 20 victims executed in the witch trials of 1692. Nineteen people were hanged, and one gentleman was crushed to death. Though we commonly refer to “witch burnings,” no witches were burned in Salem. Witchcraft was seen as treason, and English jurisprudence decreed hanging as the punishment for treason. The French were the ones who burned witches.
On my recent trip I registered for a walking tour, culminating at the Salem Witch Trials Memorial. The memorial isn’t a gravesite, but a place to honor victims. I learned the late Jewish activist and Nobel Prize recipient, Elie Wiesel, spoke at the dedication in 1992. Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and author of “Night,” always insisted the opposite of love isn’t hate, but indifference.
Our tour guide, a history teacher, was knowledgeable. She told us some five to eight percent of modern residents in the city were practicing witches. I gathered that she might be one, and when we had a private moment, I asked her.
“Yes,” she said. “I am a practicing witch.”
She was the first witch I’ve ever met. I continued to press her a bit as we walked. She said most witches are polytheists and don’t celebrate Christian holidays. I asked about entering churches, and she said there was no issue since she saw churches as simply buildings, not holy places.
Of course, I thought how to share a gospel word with her. As the group tipped her at tour end, I gave a tip and said, “God bless you, my friend.” I thought after we walked through the memorial we’d have another minute, but she departed while we paid our respects to the victims.
I’m still processing having met a practicing witch, but it reminded me of Paul’s word about “rulers of the darkness of this world” (Ephesians 6).
Not everybody seeks the true God, but the true God seeks everybody.
