What can you infer about the historical and cultural context of "The Crucible"?What do these people believe and fear and how do they see the world?

The village Salem in the 17th century was a theocracy (no separation of church and state), so spiritual reputation was an important status symbol.  Salem made not distinctions between public and private affairs, so what was going on behind closed doors or in even a person's "soul" was a matter of public record.  The village was, of course, male dominated, so women (especially foreign, non-Christian) and children were meant to be seen and not heard.  The church preached the concepts of total depravity (man's soul is born sinful), predestination (God knows who's going to heaven before they're born) and the unconditional election (only a select few could enter into heaven).  What's more, the church stressed that the devil was loose on the earth and in competition for souls, so evil was a real force.

In The Crucible, Arthur Miller wanted to parallel the religious mass hysteria from the Salem Witch Trials with the pandemonium of the Red Scare McCarthyism of the 1940s and 1950s.  So, you can substitute "communist" for the "devil" or "witch," and the results will be about the same.