Mary Dyer: Quaker

The church I grew up in keeps a small, maybe 18-inch, statue of Mary Dyer in the foyer. In 1660, Puritans hanged Mary Dyer in Boston for violating a law which banned Quakers from the Bay Colony (the former name for the State of Massachusetts.) The statue at my church is a miniature version of the life-size Mary Dyer statues sculpted by Sylvia Shaw Judson (the miniature versions of this statue vary slightly from the original.) The original sits in front of the Massachusetts state house with a copy in the Friends Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; a third copy is at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana.

The Judson statue, unveiled in Massachusetts in 1959, portrays Dyer in silent Quaker worship. Dyer, portrayed in the simple, dark garb common to friends of the 17th century, sits meditatively and in a manner designed to convey her simple resolve: To protest unjust law. In the end, the hangings of Mary Dyer and three other Quakers led King Charles II to force the Bay Colony to repeal the anti-Quaker law. This action could arguably be viewed as a large part of why America today has freedom of religion and is not a Puritan church-state.