The Original Blueprints for the City Upon a Hill
We’re just finishing the one week each year that Americans, if they ever do, reflect on the origins of US democracy, culture and beliefs. Chances are if you live in the States, you’ve heard someone this week recite part of the Declaration of Independence. Because of the most recent presidential debate, you’ve likely heard someone quoting part of the Constitution or the Federalist Papers. You may have even taken the time to reread the Gettysburg Address or the Emancipation Proclamation.
But there’s another obscure document that you’ve probably heard someone quoting during this independence week – at least four words of it. Surprisingly, it’s not a political document. It’s not from a politician at all. It’s a sermon, and it predates all those other founding documents we think about on July 4.
John Winthrop was a devout Puritan. He founded, and eventually served as Governor, of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The only part you’ve heard of John Winthrop’s 1630 sermon is the part that politicians refer to. America, they say, is a “city upon a hill.” And then they go off in a variety of directions. Well, we could be a city on a hill. Maybe we still are. Or maybe we used to be. Or maybe we’re two cities; one on a hill and one far below.
I read a fascinating essay on American “exceptionalism” (the belief that the United States is unique among all nations) by Carlos Lozado this week traces some of the history of politicians using the sermon. Here’s a brief summary:
A speechwriter for then-rising-Republican Ronald Reagan first resurrected the sermon in the mid-1970’s to help Mr. Reagan make the point that America was in danger of losing God’s favor, of no longer being God’s chosen country. Later as president, Reagan quoted the sermon to make the point that, thanks to a “great rediscovery” of its founding values, American was now a “shining” city on a hill that “hummed with commerce and creativity.”
Cover art for the 2011 documentary by Newt Gingrich, a salute to American individualism.
And we were off. New York Governor Mario Cuomo used the “city on a hill” image to suggest that America was “a tale of two cities” – one prosperous and one struggling. In the early 2010’s, former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his wife Calista made a documentary called “A City Upon a Hill,” in which he suggested America had become a city on a hill because of our self-government, entrepreneurship and individualism. A few years later President Obama suggested the city was a work in progress we were inching toward building; an aspirational goal. After the 2016 election, then-Vice President. Joe Biden remarked “so much for the shining city on the hill.” As a candidate this season, former President Trump has suggested that America once was indeed a city on a hill, but has now become “like a third world nation.” We could become king of the hill again, he says, if we refocus on beating all other nations.
But it turns out that the original sermon is barely about any of those things. I read it – all 6000 words of it – this week. Winthrop was making a really important argument; just not the one that the politicians wanted him to.
The actual sermon was almost the opposite of a call to capitalism or exceptionalism or victory; it wasn’t even called “A City on a Hill.” Instead, it was called “A Modell of Christian Charity,” and it focused on generosity – with our time, talent and treasure.
In the sermon, Winthrop argues that throughout the Bible, Jews and Christians were closest to God when they were willing to forgive debts and share resources with one another. Conversely, if we “shall neglect the observation of these articles,” and instead “prosecute our carnal intentions,” God will “surely break out in wrath against us and be revenged of such a people.”
What God wants from us, Winthrop writes, “is to do justly, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man.”
It is a group of people acting that way that Winthrop suggests may find favor. If we (and to be clear, Winthrop meant the people of New England – there was no United States at the time) can act justly, show humility, give with generosity, then we will be -- wait for it -- “a city upon a hill.”
Being a city upon a hill carries with it some big-time responsibility. It means that “the eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”
In case that warning isn’t clear enough, Winthrop adds this: “if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship other Gods, our pleasure and profits, and serve them… we shall surely perish out of the good land.”
I’ve always been mystified by the Biblical idea of one nation being uniquely chosen for special favor by God, mostly because it’s unrealistic that any nation will be made up exclusively of people walking with God, or that any other nation will be made up exclusively of non-walkers with God. And Winthrop’s argument raises a sort of threshold question for me: will God turn away from a city upon a hill if we fall to only 49% of people showing humility? Do we need to have 80% of people acting justly 80% of the time? 90%?
So I’m not 100% clear on the specifics of achieving hill city status. But now that I’ve read the document, I kind of like the idea of having the behaviors Winthrop lifts up be a bigger part of our personal and civic life.
And I like the idea of politicians holding the sermon up, as long as they acknowledge how Winthrop thought we should behave if God was going to shed His grace on us.
“We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body.”
That’s not going to make anybody’s campaign platform — division is what sells, not unity — but it’s not a bad set of principles for us to strive toward as individuals. I’d live in a city on that hill.
Notes:
John Winthrop bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Winthrop
Full text of “A Modell of Christian Charity”: https://history.hanover.edu/texts/winthmod.html#:~:text=Thou%20must%20observe%20whether%20thy,mercy%2C%20but%20by%20way%20of
Carlos Lozado essay on American exceptionalism: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/opinion/american-exceptionalism-reagan-biden-trump.html
One way out of the conundrum of God choosing a nation of people for special favor is to argue that God really chose a person, Abraham, not a nation, or that the nation was a vehicle through which to bring Christ to the world. That would make it easier to understand, but the argument is undercut by Deuteronomy 7:6-11, which is pretty explicit: “There are many nations on the earth, but He chose only Israel to be His very own.” (KJV) https://www.crosswalk.com/headlines/contributors/guest-commentary/why-did-god-pick-israel-to-be-his-chosen-people.html#:~:text=The%20final%20point%20to%20answer,to%20be%20his%20chosen%20people.
One argument for American exceptionalism is that God has shifted “most favored nation” status from Israel to the “New Israel” (the US)> There is no Biblical basis for this argument: