Salem sure was an example of what happens when people (clergy or lay, whichever) try to root out unholiness in an unholy manner. Confusion and mutual injuries.
That was my point. The church didn’t drive the witch trials. The church elders were the primary defenders of the accused witches.
It was a superstitious population using their superstitions as a convenient excuse to target neighbors for personal vendettas.
Increase Mather wrote at the time that the devil had arisen in Salem Town, not in the form of witches but in the form of those who bore false witness.