system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What led up to the Salem Witch Trials?

I'm looking to understand the religious/political climate that surrounded the events and how they got to that point.
gpt
Following the Glorious Revolution in England, parliament passed the toleration act, which granted all protestants the right to worship freely across British territory. That meant that Puritan New England had to let Quakers and Anglicans and other folks they kind of hated worship freely. Prior to this act only people of specific denominations got to vote in elections in most of the colonies, so this was a political as well as religious issue.

So basically, you had a bunch of Puritans in Massachusetts being forced to accept the political rights of people they had previously rejected and the crown exerting more influence over the colony. 

This was really the context for the upheaval and the witch trials: The colony had failed in its religious mission.