The Antinomian Controversy ( antinomian from the Greek "against the law") ended with the banishment of Anne Hutchinson in 1638. Wheelwright had been banished the year before, and Henry Vane had returned to England that same year (1637). After Hutchinson was expelled, another religious dissenter, Roger Williams (1603-1683), who had been banished in early 1636, began a literary duel with John Cotton over religious freedom and persecution, which addressed a number of points raised by the Antinomian Controversy.
On Sunday, the first snowfall of December covers the Convent of St. Birgitta in a blanket of pure white. "The world is cloaked in beauty today," Father David Blanchfield says as he begins delivering morning mass to a dozen or so churchgoers bundled up in puffy parkas and thick scarves. Sitting inside feels spiritually counterproductive. Snow, to me, has always felt holy. The purity of it, delivered straight from the heavens. The way it elongates shadows and sparkles in the sun.
Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643) was a religious reformer, Puritan dissident, midwife, and alleged prophetess whose beliefs and influence brought her into conflict with the magistrates of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, especially its governor, John Winthrop (1588-1649), in 1636-1638. She was the central voice of the so-called Antinomian Controversy, which divided the colony and, to the magistrates, threatened its mission and continued existence.
The recent tensions between local authorities in Minnesota and the immigration enforcement agencies of the Trump administration, particularly Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), are not merely the stance of rebellious cities or states. They are the latest manifestation of a dispute as old as the nation itself: the resistance of local power against a federal center that periodically attempts to govern by imposition. To interpret what is happening today in Minneapolis and its consequences as an isolated episode of immigration policy is to remain on the surface.
