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As a City on a Hill: The Story of America's Most Famous Lay Sermon
How an obscure Puritan sermon came to be seen as a founding document of American identity and exceptionalism
"For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill," John Winthrop warned his fellow Puritans at New England's founding in 1630. More than three centuries later, Ronald Reagan remade that passage into a timeless celebration of American promise. How were Winthrop's long-forgotten words reinvented as a central statement of American identity and exceptionalism? In As a City on a Hill, leading American intellectual historian Daniel Rodgers tells the surprising story of one of the most celebrated documents in the canon of the American idea. In doing so, he brings to life the ideas Winthrop's text carried in its own time and the sharply different yearnings that have been attributed to it since.
As a City on a Hill shows how much more malleable, more saturated with vulnerability, and less distinctly American Winthrop's "Model of Christian Charity" was than the document that twentieth-century Americans invented. Across almost four centuries, Rodgers traces striking shifts in the meaning of Winthrop's words--from Winthrop's own anxious reckoning with the scrutiny of the world, through Abraham Lincoln's haunting reference to this "almost chosen people," to the "city on a hill" that African Americans hoped to construct in Liberia, to the era of Donald Trump.
As a City on a Hill reveals the circuitous, unexpected ways Winthrop's words came to lodge in American consciousness. At the same time, the book offers a probing reflection on how nationalism encourages the invention of "timeless" texts to straighten out the crooked realities of the past.
"For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill," John Winthrop warned his fellow Puritans at New England's founding in 1630. More than three centuries later, Ronald Reagan remade that passage into a timeless celebration of American promise. How were Winthrop's long-forgotten words reinvented as a central statement of American identity and exceptionalism? In As a City on a Hill, leading American intellectual historian Daniel Rodgers tells the surprising story of one of the most celebrated documents in the canon of the American idea. In doing so, he brings to life the ideas Winthrop's text carried in its own time and the sharply different yearnings that have been attributed to it since.
As a City on a Hill shows how much more malleable, more saturated with vulnerability, and less distinctly American Winthrop's "Model of Christian Charity" was than the document that twentieth-century Americans invented. Across almost four centuries, Rodgers traces striking shifts in the meaning of Winthrop's words--from Winthrop's own anxious reckoning with the scrutiny of the world, through Abraham Lincoln's haunting reference to this "almost chosen people," to the "city on a hill" that African Americans hoped to construct in Liberia, to the era of Donald Trump.
As a City on a Hill reveals the circuitous, unexpected ways Winthrop's words came to lodge in American consciousness. At the same time, the book offers a probing reflection on how nationalism encourages the invention of "timeless" texts to straighten out the crooked realities of the past.
368 pages, Hardcover
Published November 13, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 26, 2018
Since the days of Ronald Reagan, virtually all presidential candidates have spoken of America as a "city on a hill," recycling a biblical phrase which Puritan John Winthrop included in a once-obscure sermon/pamphlet for the benefit of his fellow builders of the pre-America Massachusetts Bay colony. In the mouths of these recent politicians and pundits Winthrop's plea for charity and his warning about the consequences of failing to build a loving community became instead a cheerleading slogan of American exceptionalism.
"As a City on a Hill" is a riveting examination of the uses and abuses of history. Historian Daniel T. Rodgers demonstrates how "timeless" texts endure because they evolve to meet new needs. By telling the history of Winthrop's text, Rodgers invites American readers to consider that "without an honest and searching account of their pasts, nations are at peril" and, like Winthrop, he invites us to "live as if one's society was under the moral scrutiny of the world." (287)
An outstanding intellectual history of the perils and promises of nationalism.
"As a City on a Hill" is a riveting examination of the uses and abuses of history. Historian Daniel T. Rodgers demonstrates how "timeless" texts endure because they evolve to meet new needs. By telling the history of Winthrop's text, Rodgers invites American readers to consider that "without an honest and searching account of their pasts, nations are at peril" and, like Winthrop, he invites us to "live as if one's society was under the moral scrutiny of the world." (287)
An outstanding intellectual history of the perils and promises of nationalism.
January 2, 2024
This is a thoughtful intellectual history that really comes alive in its second half.
The first third of the book is a close reading of John Winthrop's 'A Model of Christian Charity', which - in a late section of the essay - urges his Puritan shipmates to 'consider that we shall be as a city on a hill', with 'the eyes of all people ... upon us'. Rodgers places the Model in its historical period, and notes that the focus of the document is the role that love and charity will need to play in the economy of Plymouth Colony, explicitly positioned as a counterweight to market-driven values of debt and individual financial security. Winthrop invokes the 'city upon a hill' phrase to suggest that the Puritans are being watched, and if they do not live out God's mercy towards one another, they will be widely seen to have deserved their project's resulting failure. This section of the book is solid intellectual history, but - particularly because Rodgers is at pains to show how unexceptional Winthrop's rhetoric and ideas are in the context of Puritan belief - it reads as a great effort to establish the historical ordinariness of a minor essay.
The middle third of the book is a survey of the nature of nationalism from the 1800s through World War I, with an interesting tangent on the adoption of the 'city upon a hill' phrase by Americo Liberian political leaders in that country. The main takeaways from the middle third are, first, that Winthrop's 'Model' remained obscure and largely unknown throughout the period, and second, that the idea of national destiny that has been associated with the 'city upon a hill' phase for the last fifty years was a creation of the 1800s, not Puritan New England. Rodgers quotes historian Robert Schulzinger: "It is a mistake to think that idea such as Manifest Destiny ... [were] derived from seventeenth-century theologians like Cotton Mather or Johnathan Edwards. Instead it makes more sense to consider American messianism a form of nationalist exuberance which afflicted all of the great powers by the end of the nineteenth century." (p.179).
The book comes into its own in its last third, in which Rodgers traces the historiography of the Puritans and the warping of Winthrop's 'Model' into a touchpoint for Ronald Reagan's vision of America, and for American exceptionalism as a near-universal feature of American political rhetoric in the early 2000s. Chapter 18, on the intellectual history of the concept of American exceptionalism, is worth the price of the book. The last chapter, Chapter 19, focuses on the ambivalence of contemporary Evangelical Protestants to the claims that America embodies a God-given mission, with believers bouncing between the certainty that America has been called to a special role since the start of European settlement, and the fear that the country as a whole is too sinful and reprobate to escape God's looming judgement. It's not a full circle return to Winthrop's own anxiety, but Rodgers presents it as an echo - Winthrop was concerned his fellow Puritans would not treat one another with love, the values demanded by their faith, and thereby provoke God's judgement; many modern Evangelicals are similarly concerned that mainstream American culture has abandoned God's plan, although they differ substantially from Winthrop on what the details of that plan look like.
What makes Rodgers' analysis fascinating - and worth reading - is his careful attention to the way specific thinkers have read back into the text, and into the history of Puritan New England, meanings that were wholly of their own times, and not present in the original. A reader with an interest in colonial New England is likely to find the book's first section interesting but unsurprising. Rather, this is a perfect book for a reader focused on the uses of history in American political rhetoric over the last century.
The first third of the book is a close reading of John Winthrop's 'A Model of Christian Charity', which - in a late section of the essay - urges his Puritan shipmates to 'consider that we shall be as a city on a hill', with 'the eyes of all people ... upon us'. Rodgers places the Model in its historical period, and notes that the focus of the document is the role that love and charity will need to play in the economy of Plymouth Colony, explicitly positioned as a counterweight to market-driven values of debt and individual financial security. Winthrop invokes the 'city upon a hill' phrase to suggest that the Puritans are being watched, and if they do not live out God's mercy towards one another, they will be widely seen to have deserved their project's resulting failure. This section of the book is solid intellectual history, but - particularly because Rodgers is at pains to show how unexceptional Winthrop's rhetoric and ideas are in the context of Puritan belief - it reads as a great effort to establish the historical ordinariness of a minor essay.
The middle third of the book is a survey of the nature of nationalism from the 1800s through World War I, with an interesting tangent on the adoption of the 'city upon a hill' phrase by Americo Liberian political leaders in that country. The main takeaways from the middle third are, first, that Winthrop's 'Model' remained obscure and largely unknown throughout the period, and second, that the idea of national destiny that has been associated with the 'city upon a hill' phase for the last fifty years was a creation of the 1800s, not Puritan New England. Rodgers quotes historian Robert Schulzinger: "It is a mistake to think that idea such as Manifest Destiny ... [were] derived from seventeenth-century theologians like Cotton Mather or Johnathan Edwards. Instead it makes more sense to consider American messianism a form of nationalist exuberance which afflicted all of the great powers by the end of the nineteenth century." (p.179).
The book comes into its own in its last third, in which Rodgers traces the historiography of the Puritans and the warping of Winthrop's 'Model' into a touchpoint for Ronald Reagan's vision of America, and for American exceptionalism as a near-universal feature of American political rhetoric in the early 2000s. Chapter 18, on the intellectual history of the concept of American exceptionalism, is worth the price of the book. The last chapter, Chapter 19, focuses on the ambivalence of contemporary Evangelical Protestants to the claims that America embodies a God-given mission, with believers bouncing between the certainty that America has been called to a special role since the start of European settlement, and the fear that the country as a whole is too sinful and reprobate to escape God's looming judgement. It's not a full circle return to Winthrop's own anxiety, but Rodgers presents it as an echo - Winthrop was concerned his fellow Puritans would not treat one another with love, the values demanded by their faith, and thereby provoke God's judgement; many modern Evangelicals are similarly concerned that mainstream American culture has abandoned God's plan, although they differ substantially from Winthrop on what the details of that plan look like.
What makes Rodgers' analysis fascinating - and worth reading - is his careful attention to the way specific thinkers have read back into the text, and into the history of Puritan New England, meanings that were wholly of their own times, and not present in the original. A reader with an interest in colonial New England is likely to find the book's first section interesting but unsurprising. Rather, this is a perfect book for a reader focused on the uses of history in American political rhetoric over the last century.
December 27, 2018
When John Winthrop did the speech “Model of Christian Charity” in Arbella in 1630, he never thought the lay sermon would be the creed of Americans in four centuries.
To deconstruct the text, Prof. Rodgers showed the continuing idea of the lay sermon- city on a hill, chosen people, and the future of democracy- in Eighteenth-Century and Nineteenth -Century when the Americans had forgotten the text itself. Until 1930s the historians, especially Perry Miller, who did the research on Puritan and Puritanism recovered the text and the value of John Winthrop who was the founding father of Massachusetts, New England. President Donald Reagan was the first and most important person who showed the famous “city on a hill” to the public and reinterpreted it under the Cold War as the background. It was the same condition with 1630’s, in dangerous environment, observed by others, and needed to be together as a homogeneous community.
It was an “traditional invention” as Prof. Eric Hobsbawm, which means the mean idea of lay sermon by John Winthrop was love, for the poor and as a Christian brothers. But the later professional historians and politicians who reinterpreted it for too much errand and even leaded it to the origin of American and democracy.
We the historians or the people who like history need to know that, when using the text, we give it lives; when doing research on the text, focus on its context.
To deconstruct the text, Prof. Rodgers showed the continuing idea of the lay sermon- city on a hill, chosen people, and the future of democracy- in Eighteenth-Century and Nineteenth -Century when the Americans had forgotten the text itself. Until 1930s the historians, especially Perry Miller, who did the research on Puritan and Puritanism recovered the text and the value of John Winthrop who was the founding father of Massachusetts, New England. President Donald Reagan was the first and most important person who showed the famous “city on a hill” to the public and reinterpreted it under the Cold War as the background. It was the same condition with 1630’s, in dangerous environment, observed by others, and needed to be together as a homogeneous community.
It was an “traditional invention” as Prof. Eric Hobsbawm, which means the mean idea of lay sermon by John Winthrop was love, for the poor and as a Christian brothers. But the later professional historians and politicians who reinterpreted it for too much errand and even leaded it to the origin of American and democracy.
We the historians or the people who like history need to know that, when using the text, we give it lives; when doing research on the text, focus on its context.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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February 18, 2021My interview with Daniel Rodgers:
https://newbooksnetwork.com/as-a-city...
This is a masterpiece. Dan Rodgers tells the story of how John Winthrop‘s 1630 sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity” was virtually forgotten by public and academy alike, and then emerged from obscurity in the middle of the Cold War and through the rhetorical polishings of Ronald Reagan became an essential national creed and foundational document of American exceptionalism.
https://newbooksnetwork.com/as-a-city...
This is a masterpiece. Dan Rodgers tells the story of how John Winthrop‘s 1630 sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity” was virtually forgotten by public and academy alike, and then emerged from obscurity in the middle of the Cold War and through the rhetorical polishings of Ronald Reagan became an essential national creed and foundational document of American exceptionalism.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews