John Winthrop's City on a Hill
Puritan Ideals Shape Daily Living and Challenge Posterity
Dec 6, 2008
John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” has uniquely served America as a metaphor of example ever since it was penned in 1630. Ronald Reagan spoke of the city on a hill several times, using the powerful imagery in his 1989 farewell address in which he stated, “I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life.” Most recently, Sarah Palin referred to the city on a hill during the vice president debate with Senator Biden. America as a “city on a hill” has purposed many egalitarian movements in American history, but it began with the Puritans in New England.
The Puritan City on a Hill
Part of Governor Winthrop’s address to the Puritans even before they landed, the city on a hill comes from Matthew 5:14. “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” The Puritan community was to be “ knit together by this bond of love…” and each member was to “bear one another’s burdens." Winthrop’s charge identified four areas of consideration: the persons, the work, the end, and the means.
Puritans saw themselves as the New Israel, bound together in a covenant with God. Taken from the Old Testament, the covenant was a contract. If Puritans lived as the prophet Micah counseled, “to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God,” they would be blessed. As Winthrop cautions, however, “if we deal falsely with our God…” He would withdraw from them and the Puritan community would be “…made a story and a by-word through the world.”
Winthrop directly invokes the Old Testament six times in his final section, demonstrating that God’s relationship with Israel was identical to the Puritan relationship. The community must live and act “as one man.” There would be no individualism. Puritans lived in small “godly communities,” caring for each other but ultimately knit together in a common purpose that reflected their Calvinist theology.
Predestination and the Perseverance of the Saints
Puritans took John Calvin’s tenet of “unconditional election,” often referred to as predestination, and saw it as part of God’s foreordination. Since nothing happens by chance, all is part of God’s will. The city on a hill was a community in which everyone labored according to their specific talents and all did so joyfully. This would become the so-called “Protestant” or “Puritan” work ethic. Puritans had left England precisely to establish a separate community, free from the “corruption” of non-Puritan influences. Much later, this fear would lead, in part, to the infamous Salem Witch trials.
The perseverance of the saints was another of Calvin’s points. God’s direction, leading the Puritans to the American wildness and the subsequent building of Winthrop’s “city on a hill,” would ensure they would continue to believe and that such belief would maintain righteous living. In this, the city on a hill was exclusive: detractors like Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson could not remain in the “city.”
The City on a Hill in History
As colonial America became a nation, expanding beyond the original borders, the idea of the “city on a hill” often took new meaning. Americans saw themselves as caretakers of a great and noble experiment that would bring hope and opportunity to many people. Still today the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor holds aloft a torch bearing the light of freedom.
John Winthrop’s words helped to shape the many influences of colonial New England on an emerging egalitarian society. The city on a hill set the stage for a society that easily blended divine providence with practical goals both in the private lives of Americans as well as national politics.
Source:
John Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity
 |
