"For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken… we shall be made a story and a by-word throughout the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God… We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us til we be consumed out of the good land whither we are a-going." John Winthrop

A City on a Hill  by Rev. Peter Marshall

"Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?"    

    (Luke 12:56)

  

    In all of our nation's history there has never been a time when we more desperately needed to recover our understanding of the American mission.  If we don't know who we are as Americans, and what we're supposed to be about, how can we understand how to fix things?

The shining city on a hill - that's the key phrase.  Understanding the meaning of that in our American past unlocks the door to recovering our sense of mission.  The phrase comes from a sermon entitled "A Model of Christian Charity" preached by Governor John Winthrop to the 200 Puritans coming with him to Massachusetts in 1630.  The sermon came from the vision that God had given Winthrop for what would become the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

In terms of America's moral and spiritual foundations the Puritans of Massachusetts (including the separatist Puritans at Plymouth that we have always called Pilgrims) were our nation's founders.  Of course, there had been colonists in Virginia for 24 years before Winthrop's sermon, but it is no exaggeration to say that the New England Puritans were the originators of our political culture and rhetoric.  They laid the foundations of our national consciousness - not only our understanding of why America exists, but also the kind of language that we use in talking about that understanding.

Winthrop's message was the colonists' "mission statement."  In reality Winthrop was giving what has been called "the Ur-text of American literature," because of the foundational nature of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  In it Winthrop made clear that they were not coming to the New World on a lark, or to make their fortunes.  "Thus stands the cause between God and us: we are entered into covenant with Him for this work."  They were committed Christian individuals, but there was more to it than that: "We are a company, professing ourselves fellow members of Christ, and thus we ought to account ourselves knit together by this bond of love.  We must be knit together in this work as one man.  We must delight in each other, make one another's condition our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our Commission and Community in this work, as members of the same body." For this new work of God in the New World, then, their corporate life or their relationships with each other were every bit as important as their individual relationships with Jesus Christ.  The Puritan never saw himself as a "lone ranger Christian," uninvolved with other people; he was always called to be "salt and light" in relationship to the larger society.  As Thomas Hooker, founder of the city of Hartford put it: "Mutual dependence is,

as it were, the very sinews of society." 

The Puritans were reformers.  They had been intent on reforming the Church of England, attempting to bring it back to a New Testament fervor and purity.  But the Anglican establishment, led by King and Archbishop, fiercely resisted reformation and persecuted the reformers.  So, God called the Puritans into the American wilderness to found a new nation.  They said that they came here "to finish the Protestant Reformation."  The first arena to be reformed certainly was the Church, but the reformation would never be complete until the entire society reflected Biblical principles.

America, then, was not founded on race or ethnic loyalty, as had always been the case with national identities.  The countries of Old Europe always defined themselves in terms of their national "type" or character.  As a nation of immigrants, however, we would be made up of many different national types or characters.  We could never have any corporate unity on that basis.  We were founded on the basic principles of Christianity - the twin commands of Christ - to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  The Biblical teachings that every human life is precious because each of us bears the image of the Creator God, and that God's will is for every person to live in freedom from tyranny and oppression - those  would be forever enshrined in the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence: "That all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.  Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  America was not founded on race or blood or ethnic loyalty, but on principles - the only nation in world history so founded.  That is why G.K. Chesterton famously said in 1922 that America "is a nation with the soul of a church." He added that like a church, it is founded on a creed.  (Well, the Reformed Churches from the Calvinist wing of the Protestant Reformation were creedal churches, at least.  But then, Calvinism is what produced the Puritans, which is why Chesterton was right about America).  That's what the Declaration of Independence is, after all.  It's our national creedal statement.  It's a "this we believe" statement.

America was founded as a corporate Christian experiment in reformation - to see whether men and women committed to putting into practice the Biblical principles of self-government could create a society with liberty and justice for every soul.  That society would not only become an example to the rest of the world, but also a source of hope and inspiration for all those who aspire to a better life for themselves and their children. 

God gave the Puritans a holy mission in a new land.  That understanding became the basis for our American self-understanding.  That was why we came here, and still is why we're here now.  Puritan Edward Johnson wrote America's first history book in 1654, when he published the popular Wonder-Working Providence of Sion's Savior in New-England.  He wrote that New Englanders were a new prophetic army of God sent into the wilderness: "Then judge all of you whether these poor New England people be not the forerunners of Christ's Army, and the marvelous providences which you shall now hear, be not the very Finger of God, and whether the Lord hath not sent this people to preach in this wilderness, and to proclaim to all nations, the near approach of the most wonderful works that ever the sons of men saw." 

There is certainly a note of "wow, aren't we something special!" here.  But, the modern historians that always bash the Puritans for their supposed pride and self-righteousness tend to overlook (or ignore) the fact that they were invariably self-critical.  John Winthrop was typically harder on himself than anyone else: "Searching my heart at last, I found the world had stolen away my love for my God. Then I acknowledged my unfaithfulness and pride of heart, and turned again to my God, and humbled my soul before Him, and he turned and accepted me, and so I renewed my covenant of walking with my God, and watching my heart and ways." 

That is from a diary entry when he was only 28 years old!

As God blessed and prospered New England in the decades after 1630 her preachers began to so often warn the people that worldliness and spiritual sloth were creeping into the City on a Hill that these sermons came to be called jeremiads, after Israel's strong prophet.  One of the most renowned of these was Samuel Danforth's 1671 A Brief Recognition of New-England's Errand into the Wilderness. Reminding his listeners that God had sent them across "the vast ocean into this waste and howling wilderness to walk in the faith of the Gospel," he then warned them that God could at any point "cast us off in displeasure, and scatter us in this wilderness."

So, America's foundational Puritan sense of mission and corporate identity combined a sense of privilege with a burden of responsibility; a feeling of being chosen by God with a fear of disobeying Him. 

At the end of his famous sermon Winthrop, borrowing from Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount," uttered what has become one of the most memorable lines in American history: "For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill." Recent generations of Americans have sometimes taken that statement as a boast, but that's not how Winthrop meant it at all.  He was simply metaphorically illustrating what he stated in the sermon: "The eyes of all people are upon us."  He knew that the world would watch this American experiment to see how it would turn out.

And, his point was that as an experiment in reformation, it could fail.  Toward the close of his 1630 sermon Winthrop expressed what would quickly become a staple of New World Puritan preaching, and later of our American self-understanding.  "(The Lord) will expect a strict performance of the Articles contained in (their covenant with God).  But if we shall neglect the observance of these Articles, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us."  In other words, the American experiment would always be under judgment.  We could never think that we had arrived, or become haughty and proud about our success.  If we ever thought that way about ourselves, it would be a sure sign that we had failing at it, because due to the basic sinfulness of man there would always be more to reform in American life.

Space does not permit the tracing of what has come to be called "the New England way" up through American history to the present, but suffice it to say that all of the elements of the original Puritan foundation are still with us, though sad to say the Biblical language has been secularized.  Even those who are not committed Christians can agree that Americans are a blessed people who have been called by God to be an example to the rest of the world, by developing the blessings of freedom for everyone in our own society, as well as holding out the hope of it to the rest of the world. 

As New Englanders migrated into New York State and Ohio, then across the Midwest, and then up the Oregon Trail to the Northwest, they carried their reformist Christianity with them.  During the first half of the 19th Century the upper half of the continent and many parts of the South experienced what has been called the "New Englandization of the nation."  As Harriet Beecher Stowe stated it: "The seed-bed of New England was the seed-bed of this great American Republic, and of all that is likely to come of it."  Reform- minded Christians of that day expressed their Puritan heritage by targeting alcoholism, Sabbath-breaking, deplorable conditions in prisons and insane asylums, the redemption of "fallen" women, and the horrors of slavery.

In the South, evangelical Protestants were never imbued with the Puritan vision of reforming society.  During the Second Great Awakening (1795-1860), which saw an explosive revival of fervent Christianity across the country, the chief method of spreading the Gospel in the southern part of the country was the camp meeting, or backwoods revival meeting.  The Christianity preached there was more individualistic, mostly focused on getting rid of personal sin habits.  For this reason, among others, the terrible sin of slavery was by and large not confronted by Southern evangelicalism. 

Ironically, a hundred years after the Civil War, and a generation after the Civil Rights movement, the understanding of the American mission has begun to be rediscovered by Southern evangelical Christians, even as it has lost its Bible-based fervor in the land of the Puritans.  Both the political and the spiritual leadership in the nation have shifted to a great degree to the South and to the West.  Perhaps out of these parts of the country will come a resurgence of the Puritan legacy, and a renewal of the American mission, because the Puritans had it right.

Then perhaps, by the grace of God, we can truly become the City on a Hill. 

I pray so, and I fervently hope so.

Copyright 2008, Peter J. Marshall. All rights reserved.

***Anyone wishing information about: Mr. Marshall's availability to preach or speak at your church or event, donating to the ministry, or purchasing any of the products in the store, is invited to call the office (800-879-3298) or to visit and explore his web site. The address is: PeterMarshallMinistries.com.

"Wee are a Company professing our selues fellow members of Christ . . . knitt together by this bond of loue . . . Wee are entered into Covenant with him for this worke." John Winthrop

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