Most of the world just now thinks of the U.S. as a very violent nation and culture. In an interview with Newsweek to be published on 18 September (according to a report on the BBC on 11 Sept.), former South African president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela said that, under the Bush administration, America has become a threat to world peace. Nations that do not endlessly cite a supposed "right to bear arms" are shocked at the rampant gun violence in the U.S. and current U.S. Attorney General Ashcroft has made it harder for foreign terrorists to get U.S. drivers' licenses but easier for them to buy guns! And all this external criticism of U.S. violence is often matched by internal critics, too. In 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr., said that the world's biggest purveyor of violence was his (our) own government.

Deep in our culture is what New Testament theologian Walter Wink has called "the myth of redemptive violence, " the myth that salvation, freedom, security, and peace can be obtained by violently destroying all the evil persons in the world. (It is ironic that Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush both want to rid the world of evil and both choose the same means: kill all the evil people and don't worry about innocents as "collateral damage.") So, there is much truth to this picture of U.S. culture.

But there is another side to U.S. history and culture. There is a history of dissent and rebellion and struggle for freedom and justice. That history includes a strong stream of nonviolent witness. One historian estimates that fully two-thirds of all U.S. citizens are descendants of immigrants fleeing conscription into the armies of the "old world." We are a nation mostly of descendants of draft dodgers! We are also a nation of utopian religious experiments, many of them pacifist. And, although often forgotten, we are a nation of nonviolent activists. It is to this alternative strand of U.S. history that the Quaker martyr Mary Dyer belongs.

Since there is little record of her early life, we do not know when she was born or much about her prior to her marriage to William Dyer in St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London on 27 October 1633. The parish record listed her maiden name as Mary Barrett. William Dyer, a Puritan dissenter from the Church of England, was a milliner in the New Exchange and a member of the Fishmongers' Company. He was apparently quieter but just as resolved in his religious convictions as Mary, his soon-to-be-more-famous wife. Dyer was also a good businessman and an intelligent politician who always seemed to rise in local affairs -- a talent which would come in handy more than once for his firebrand spouse.

In 1634 or 1635, the Dyers emigrated to the "New World," settling in Massachusetts Bay Colony. They picked a bad time to settle in that Colony, arriving soon after the exile of Roger and Mary Williams "into the Wilderness" for religious and political dissent. The charges against Williams were four:

1. He held that the Native Americans were the true owners of the land and that it ought to be purchased from them and not just arbitrarily obtained by patent from the King of England.
2. He believed that the state had no power to regulate religious beliefs. Heresy was to be fought only by means of the truth of the Gospel and not by the sword of the state. As long as people lived quiet lives of good public order, their religious convictions were of no concern to secular government. (Thus, Williams could make exception for a religion that required human sacrifice, etc.)
3. The institutions of church and religious government should thus be separate. It was Roger Williams, not Thomas Jefferson, who first spoke of a "hedge or wall" between government and church in order to protect each from being manipulated by the other. Thus, state support of churches through taxes were wrong. Ministers were to be supported solely by the free will offerings of the members of their churches.
4. Nonbelievers were not to be forced to swear oaths because in so doing, they blasphemed. If the Massachusetts Puritans were threatened by the challenge of the Williams, they were soon to find more radical challenges to their "Holy Commonwealth," the so-called "antinomian movement" led by Anne Hutchinson and the "invasion: of the Quakers. In both these latter movements, Mary Dyer was a prominent leader.

New Testament scholars refer to a movement in the church at Corinth as "antinomian." It apparently twisted Paul's teaching of grace (perhaps under Gnostic influence) to mean that no outward behavior of baptized Christians was important. Thus, these members were sexually promiscuous and had other problems that Paul had to oppose. It is very important to understand that the movement led by Anne Marbury Hutchinson was not "antinomian" (meaning "lawless") in that sense, though doubtless the Puritans that gave her that title wished to convey that sense. Rather, Hutchinson and her followers believed that one did not need to follow strict laws in order to come to Christ and they believed that righteous living for the redeemed would follow the free leading of the Holy Spirit rather than strict regulation set out by church and state. She held Bible studies on this matter for women and men in her home -- and it was as much her leadership as a woman in "spiritual matters" as her actual teaching that so disturbed the authorities about Hutchinson.

In November 1637, the followers of Anne Hutchinson were disenfranchised and disarmed, including William Dyer, who lost his position as elected town clerk. On 22 March 1638, Anne Hutchinson was formerly excommunicated from the Puritan (Congregational) Church. Like the Williams' before her, Hutchinson would soon go into exile, but she would not have their good fortune in befriending Native Americans. She was killed in an "Indian raid" and the Puritan divines interpreted that act as divine judgment on a "godless woman." When Anne was excommunicated, Mary Dyer rose quietly and went out of the church with Anne.

Due to controversy over a deformed stillborn child, the Dyers were soon also excommunicated and banished. They followed Hutchinson to Rhode Island, the colony founded by Williams that was fast becoming a haven for religious dissenters. William Dyer soon became one of the founders of the town of Portsmouth. In 1638, he was once more elected a clerk. The Dyers ultimately settled in Newport and William held several offices for both Newport and Portsmouth. But just as their fortunes were recovering, Mary was about to embark on a religious quest that would bring them back into conflict with the Boston authorities. In 1652, the Dyers accompanied Roger Williams (now a Seeker, after having started the first Baptist church in America) and John Clarke, M.D., pastor of the Baptist church in Newport to England to secure a royal charter for Rhode Island. True to Williams' convictions, Rhode Island had been purchased from the Narragansett "Indians" (Williams' wrote a grammar of their language for English speakers), but it was important also to secure a royal charter if Rhode Island was to remain a free colony. Most important, the colony leaders wanted the king to guarantee religious liberty in the colony, which ultimately, he did. But while in England, Mary became a follower of George Fox and Margaret Fell, the founders of the Friends or Quakers. Their doctrine of following the "Inner Light" of Christ was very similar to Hutchinson's "antinomianism." She remained in England for 5 years while her husband returned to their home, so that she could thoroughly absorb the teachings of her new faith.

Mary Dyer's return to New England in 1657 was ill-timed. She arrived after a new governor, John Endicott, had succeeded in passing a series of punitive laws against the new Quaker sect. Unaware of the new laws, Mary had taken ship to Boston and planned to travel from Newport from there. She was arrested, along with fellow Quaker Anne Burden, as soon as she left the ship. They were kept incommunicado in darkened cells with boarded-up windows. Mary's books and Quaker writings were confiscated and burned. She finally was able to smuggle out a letter, but it took a long time to reach William Dyer in Newport.

Some two and a half months later, Governor Endicott was startled when William Dyer burst into his home demanding the immediate release of his wife. Endicott wanted to tread lightly with William Dyer because, although he had been disenfranchised by Boston, much of the current Boston authorities regarded him highly because of his high rank in Rhode Island. William's prestige forced the authorities to free Mary, but only on the condition of a heavy bond and his "word of honor" that if his wife was allowed to return home, he was never to let her return to Massachusetts. Further, they could not stay overnight in any place in Massachussetts and Mary was not to be permitted to speak to anyone in the colony, lest she should infect them with her heretical ideas. Although grateful to be released, Mary was furious at being silenced like a misbehaving child as she returned home!

Again, things seemed to go well for a time. Back in Rhode Island, Mary became a Quaker "minister." The Friends did not have ordained or paid clergy, but they recognized gifts of prophecy (i.e., preaching) and leadership and did so regardless of the person's sex. Mary began to preach all over the land, not just in Quaker Meetings, but in mixed assemblies. She rejected all oaths, all violence, contended that women and men stood on equal ground in church organization and worship, and that sex did not determine gifts of prophecy. She seems to have been supported in much of this by William, although he, having become a Baptist and a member of John Clarke's church, never followed her into the Friends' faith.

Problems began when Mary and other Quakers began to feel a missionary call to speak the truth (as they perceived it) in places that did not welcome them. In 1658, Mary was expelled from New Haven, Connecticut for open-air preaching "without a license" from the state. (Of course, licenses to preach were given only to the "standing order" of Puritan Congregationalists and only to men.) Meanwhile other Quakers, friends of Mary's had gone to Massachusetts and begun to make converts from town to town. At first they were arrested, whipped, and released with a warning never to return. This happened twice. Then the punishments got worse. Eventually, all Quakers were banned from Massachusetts under penalty of death by hanging. Three Friends went again to Massachussetts in 1659 and were arrested. When Mary heard of it, she went to visit her friends in prison, as Jesus demands in Matthew 25. She was promptly arrested herself.

Again, William Dyer achieved the release of his wife and the other Quakers. He wrote a scathing letter challenging the religious persecution. They were released under threat of death if they should return. Two of them felt it their duty to remain in Massachussetts to bear witness to the Gospel and to "look the bloody laws in the face." Within a month, they were again arrested and tortured while awaiting trial. Mary Dyer, along with two friends, walked from Providence, RI, to Boston to plead for their release. Mary was arrested while speaking to a Quaker through the prison bars. She decided not to accept William's help this time. Along with the others, she would challenge the very right of Massachussetts to impose the death penalty for religious conviction. She was hanged on 1 June 1660.

When the authorities accused Mary of being guilty of her own blood because she had returned after having been warned of the consequences, she replied that she had come to keep them from bloodguilt by challenging these laws. Like Jesus, she prayed for her executioners before she was slain. An unsympathetic observer said that she hung "like a flag" as a warning to other Quakers. A "flag" Mary was, but not as this man thought. She became a rallying point for all who loved religious liberty, including those, like the Baptists of Rhode Island, who didn't particularly like Quakers (to put it mildly). Mary's death came to be seen as martyrdom even in Massachussetts, where it hastened the repeal of anti-Quaker statutes, although it was a long time before complete religious liberty was achieved. In 1959, the Massachussetts General Court, which had condemned Mary Dyer 300 years earlier, ordered a bronze statue to be erected in her memory on the grounds of the State House in Boston. In front of another wing stands a statue of her friend, Anne Hutchinson.

We need more Mary Dyers today. We need people of fearless nonviolent witness. Our courts now have thousands of detainees (citizens and non-citizens) without charge, without access to family or lawyer, simply on "suspicion" of connection to terrorism. Popular demagogues urge us to invade Muslim lands, kill their leaders and forcibly convert their populations to Christianity! We need Mary Dyers willing to stand up nonviolently against these actions, no matter the price. We have a government that is now shredding our own Constitution and defying international treaties and law. Where are our Mary Dyers? Our president threatens a preemptive strike against Iraq, threatens to murder its leader (admittedly a brutal tyrant) under the euphemism "regime change," and this has been denounced by famous religious leaders in England, but where are their counterparts here in the U.S.? Where are our Mary Dyers?

Seeking martyrdom for its own sake is contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, I believe. But risking death for the sake of the Gospel and its principles of justice, peace, love of enemies, freedom, equality, mutual servanthood -- this is the heart of our calling as followers of the nonviolent Christ. May God raise up more Mary Dyers today.

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