City upon a Hill

John Winthrop speech

This scripture was cited at the end of Puritan John Winthrop's lecture or treatise, "A Model of Christian Charity" delivered on March 21, 1630, at Holyrood Church in Southampton, before his first group of Massachusetts Bay colonists embarked on the ship Arbella to settle Boston. In quoting Matthew's Gospel (5:14) in which Jesus warns, "a city on a hill cannot be hid," Winthrop warned his fellow Puritans that their new community would be "as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us", meaning, if the Puritans failed to uphold their covenant with God, then their sins and errors would be exposed for all the world to see: "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 byword through the world".

Winthrop's lecture was forgotten for nearly two hundred years until the Massachusetts Historical Society published it in 1839. It remained an obscure reference for more than another century until Cold War era historians and political leaders reinterpreted the event, crediting Winthrop's text, erroneously, as the foundational document of the idea of American exceptionalism.

Winthrop's warning that "we will become a story" has been fulfilled several times in the four centuries since, as described in Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance by Kai T. Erikson in 1966.

More recently, Princeton historian Dan T. Rogers, in his 2018 book As a City on a Hill: The Story of America's Most Famous Lay Sermon, made an effort to correct the record, arguing that there was no grand sense of destiny among the first Puritans to settle Boston. They carried no ambitions to build a New Jerusalem, they did not name their new home Zion, or Canaan, the promised land of milk and honey; rather, they sought only a place to uphold their covenant with God, free from the interference they experienced in England. By the second generation of settlement, New England was considered a backwater in the Protestant Reformation, an inconsequential afterthought to the Puritan Commonwealth in England and the wealthier Dutch Republic, and in truth, America's sense of destiny came generations later.Daniel T. Rodgers, As a City on a Hill: The Story of America's Most Famous Lay Sermon, Princeton University Press, 2018; Richard M. Gamble, In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an American Myth, Continuum, 2012; and Carter Wilkie, How modern leaders got John Winthrop’s ‘City on a Hill’ wrong: A call for humility has become the battle cry for American exceptionalism, CommonWealth Magazine, January 17, 2019.

Use in American politics

On January 9, 1961, President-elect John F. Kennedy quoted the phrase during an address delivered to the general court of Massachusetts:

On November 3, 1980, Ronald Reagan referred to the same event and image in his election-eve address, "A Vision for America". Reagan was reported to have been inspired by author Manly P. Hall and his book The Secret Destiny of America, which alleged a secret order of philosophers had created the idea of America as a country for religious freedom and self-governance.

These visitors to that city on the Potomac do not come as white or black, red or yellow; they are not Jews or Christians; conservatives or liberals; or Democrats or Republicans. They are Americans awed by what has gone before, proud of what for them is still… a shining city on a hill.}}

Reagan would reference this concept through multiple speeches; notably again in his January 11, 1989, farewell speech to the nation:

Barack Obama, as a U.S. Senator, made reference to the topic in his commencement address on 2 June 2006, at the University of Massachusetts Boston:

More than half of you represent the very first member of your family to ever attend college. In the most diverse university in all of New England, I look out at a sea of faces that are African-American and Hispanic-American and Asian-American and Arab-American. I see students that have come here from over 100 different countries, believing like those first settlers that they too could find a home in this City on a Hill—that they too could find success in this unlikeliest of places.}}

In 2016, Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee in the 2012 election, incorporated the idiom into a condemnation of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign:

During the 2016 presidential race, Texas Senator Ted Cruz used the phrase during his speech announcing the suspension of his campaign. President Barack Obama also alluded to President Ronald Reagan's use of the phrase, during his speech at the Democratic National Convention the same year, as he proposed a vision of America in contrast to that of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

In 2017, former FBI director James Comey used the phrase in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election:

On November 10, 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used the phrase while delivering an address at the inauguration of the Ronald Reagan Institute Center for Freedom and Democracy.

Because that’s what free people do. We come together; we solve problems; we win, they lose; and we execute our foreign policy confident that we are that shining city on a hill.}}

Chair Bennie Thompson, of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, used the phrase in his opening remarks on the first day of hearing on June 9, 2022.

Use in Australian politics

In Australian politics, the similar phrase "the light on the hill" was famously used in a 1949 conference speech by Prime Minister Ben Chifley, and as a consequence this phrase is used to describe the objective of the Australian Labor Party. It has often been referenced by both journalists and political leaders in that context since this time.

Use in hymns

The phrase is used in "Now, Saviour now, Thy Love Impart", a hymn written by Charles Wesley.

References

Notes

References

1. Squiers, A. (2018). ''The Politics of the Sacred in America: The Role of Civil Religion in Political Practice''. New York: Springer. pp. 62–63. {{ISBN. 978-3-319-68870-1.
2. Bremer, Francis, J., ''John Winthrop: America's Forgotten Founding Father'', Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 171. It is often stated that the sermon was written aboard the flagship ''Arabella'' and delivered in Boston harbor, an error introduced by a cover letter on an early manuscript not in Winthrop's hand when the sermon was first published.
3. Winthrop, John, ''The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630-1649'', Harvard University Press, 1996, p.1 note 1
4. "A City Upon a Hill: Winthrop's "Modell of Christian Charity," 1630".
5. (October 7, 1966). "Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance". Wiley.
6. (1961-01-20). "The President-Elect: City Upon a Hill". Time.
7. "Address of President-Elect John F. Kennedy Delivered to a Joint Convention of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts". [[Kennedy Library]].
8. (25 March 2020). "The Cult of the Shining City Embraces the Plague".
9. Levingston, Steven E.. "Political Bookworm - Reagan and the occult". Voices.washingtonpost.com.
10. "Election Eve Address "A Vision for America"". UC Santa Barbara.
11. "Farewell Address to the Nation".
12. "Obama Speech – University of Massachusetts at Boston Commencement Address".
13. (March 3, 2016). "Romney: Trump playing Americans for suckers". [[YouTube]].
14. Beckwith, Ryan Teague. (3 May 2016). "Read Ted Cruz's Speech on Dropping Out of the Presidential Race".
15. (27 July 2016). "Full text: President Obama's DNC speech". Politico.
16. (8 June 2017). "Full Transcript and Video: James Comey's Testimony on Capitol Hill". The New York Times.
17. Pompeo, Mike. (10 November 2020). "The Promise of America". U.S. [[State Department]].
18. Thompson, Bennie. (9 June 2022). "Read the full text of chair Bennie Thompson's remarks in first Jan. 6 hearing". nbcnews.
19. Casey, Scott. (10 March 2008). "Keating! comes to Brisbane". The Brisbane Times.
20. "Hymn number 469 Now, Saviour now, Thy love impart".