The Puritans knit their community together in ways that were both deeply spiritual and immensely practical. They prayed together, worked together, cared for each other in sickness and childbirth. What happened to people who defied that community spirit – the rebels and radicals who found other ways? Click here for the 90-minute video.

In this challenging panel discussion, award-winning author Eve LaPlante, historian Peter Mancall, and Marc Kohler of the Roger Williams Foundation explore the limits of the Puritan common good. 117 people listened to the panel and participated in the on-line dialogue sponsored by the Partnership of Historic Bostons on October 14, 2021.

Eve LaPlante (above, left) is the author of five nonfiction books including American Jezebel, a biography of Anne Hutchinson, and Salem Witch Judge, winner of the 2008 Massachusetts Book Award for Nonfiction for her intimate and powerful portrayal of Samuel Sewall, the judge who became an abolitionist and feminist. Marc Kohler (above, right) began to read about Roger Williams and, convinced that Williams’ remarkable story should be more widely known, established the Roger Williams Educational Foundation. He speaks and writes about Williams’ commitment to freedom of religion and friendship with the Narragansett people, and of his legacy today.

Moderator Roxanne Reddington-Wilde (above, left) researches early modern Scotland and teaches at Cambridge College in Boston, MA. Peter C. Mancall, (above, right) Mellon professor of the humanities and a professor of history and anthropology at the University of Southern California, is the author of seven books, including his most recent, The Trials of Thomas Morton: An Anglican Lawyer, His Puritan Foes, and the Battle for a New England.