Edward Wightman was a successful merchant and left behind a family when he was burned at the stake in 1612. In fact, I went to college with one of his descendants, Bobby Wightman. The Bobby Wightman of our day is a historian, by hobby if not by trade. As a descendent, he was allowed to dress up in something resembling surgical scrub and go into a room at SMU containing an original copy of the book about the burning of Edward Wightman. He brought a professional that took no-flash pictures, excerpts of which are included in this blog post, thanks to him.
The case of Edward Wightman demonstrates three things:
First, Edward Wightman’s experience in parallel with Roger William’s shows just how hard it was for authorities to distinguish mental delusions of grandeur and other error from genuine if revolutionary inspiration. We still have troubles in our own day with distinguishing rejection of injustice in hopes of making a stronger nation from rejection of national and even human values. 
One of the charges for which Wightman was executed coincides with Roger Williams’s views: an antipathy for infant baptism.
However, that is charge number 13 of 16. Higher up on the list is the view of Jesus common to some liberal modern churches and Islam: that Jesus was a human prophet only.
Charge 8 seemed the most striking. Edward Wightman is charged with believing that he is himself the Holy Spirit. After denying Jesus a place in the trinity, he wants to claim a place for himself!
What we can’t tell from the document is if these charges were exaggerated. Perhaps he was trying to explain how the holy spirit indwells all of us, much as the inner light focused crowd that preceded the Quakers emphasized.
Much of the document reads like a litany of ideas that have been in discussion for over a thousand years. But not charge 8. That charge was either one Wightman himself believed, or was included to make sure everyone could see he had gone too far.
Second, the value of the freedoms of conscience and speech. If Edward Wightman lived in our day in a nation with the separation of church and state, his ideas would be disputed, perhaps ferociously. He might have been debunked and ridiculed by some, even while being revered by others. In our nation however, he should not have be executed unless he disrupted the civil peace. By disrupted, I mean something more harmful than interruption by peaceful protest.
Third, violence prolongs civil unrest, and the other side’s commitment. Unfortunately, we’ve seen both criminals and authorities cross the line to violent action against those with whom they disagree. As with Wightman’s executors, they create survivors dedicated to remembering and to correcting the injustice. The fact that Wightman’s descendants remember and revere him ~14 generations later is illuminating.
What Edward Wightman cannot tell us much about is the alternate decision we chose for a generation. Suppression of free speech via societal norms of “political correctness” seemed to result in a more peaceful world for a time.
However, it allowed hatred to linger in hiding. Instead of experiencing peer pressure to find common ground, quiet disrespect survived and replicated resulting in massive polarization. Simultaneously victims thought they had chances they never had. They were in essence denied the opportunity to protest against their accusers. A whole generation was interviewed by managers trained in what not to say so no one could tell if they discriminated in hiring, promotion etc. The managers could even deny it to themselves. However, the higher unemployment and remaining statistical disparities in pay do not lie. The difference in the results of musical auditions behind screens vs. in person do not lie.
It turns out the resulting silence was not peace. The results accross time are not that different from the silence of continuing injustice after execution. The only working solution we’ve found is the sometimes loud, sometimes ferocious debate — with words and demonstration.
The silent discriminators have been unmasked. The new loud discussion has begun. May we keep it to a war of words, and remember the lessons of Edward Wightman even as we reject the silent desperation of politically correct injustice.
Originally published on Medium in About Rekindled.
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