and a relatively reasonable one at that. Still, Harbottle Grimstone. Is there a creakier, more British name? A name up there with ye olde Ralph of Coggeshall or Hereward the Wake? A name that better sums up the world and worldview the Puritans left behind? When I was reading about Massachusetts Bay sending soldiers to burn Pequot women and children alive I would mutter the name “Harbottle Grimstone” under my breath to keep in mind that these are more or less medieval people who are chronologically closer to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales than to The Wire.
It’s worth revisiting New England’s Puritans because they are our medieval people. The most storied way to get from the castle moat of monarchy to the polluted shoreline of this here republic is on their dank little ships. We could have done a lot worse. Perry Miller, thinking of Nathaniel Hawthorne, wrote that having respect for the Puritans “is not the same thing as believing in them.”
As Hawthorne, who added an extra “w” to his last name to distance himself from a forebear who had been a judge in the Salem witch trials, put it, “Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors; and let each successive generation thank Him, not less fervently, for being one step further from them in the march of ages.”
In “Christian Charity,” Winthrop writes that if the colonists hold up their end of the covenant, their deity “will delight to dwell among us as His own people.” They are not, therefore, merely living for God, they will live with Him.
“For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.” Here, Winthrop has returned to the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:14, Jesus said to the throng before him, “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.” This comes directly after Christ has enumerated the nine blessings called the beatitudes, including, “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” And “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.” And “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”
“ The eyes of all people are upon us,” warned Winthrop, “so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken . . . we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.”
The image of a city on a hill will get passed down as an all-American beacon of hope. But it wasn’t only that to Winthrop. To him, the city on the hill was also something else, something worse—a warning. If he and his shipmates reneged on their covenant with God, the city on a hill would be a lighthouse of doom beckoning the wrath of God to Boston Harbor.
T alking about Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity” without discussing Ronald Reagan would be like mentioning Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” and pretending Whitney Houston doesn’t exist. Whitney and Reagan’s covers were way more famous than the original versions ever were.
Winthrop’s sermon, as a supposed early model for the idea of America, became a blank screen onto which Americans in general and Reagan in particular projected their own ideas about the country we ended up with. For a ten-year stretch, the 1980s, Winthrop’s city on a hill became the national metaphor. And looking into the ways the sermon, or at least that one phrase in it, was used, throws open the American divide between action and words, between what we say we believe versus what we actually do.
Like a hostess dusting off her gravy boat come Thanksgiving, Ronald Reagan would trot out Winthrop’s image of a city on a hill on special occasions throughout his political career. The night before winning the 1980 presidential election he proclaimed, “Let us resolve they will say of our day and our generation, we did keep the faith with our God, that we did act worthy of ourselves, that we did protect and pass on lovingly that shining city on a hill.”
Reagan always brightened Winthrop’s
It’s worth revisiting New England’s Puritans because they are our medieval people. The most storied way to get from the castle moat of monarchy to the polluted shoreline of this here republic is on their dank little ships. We could have done a lot worse. Perry Miller, thinking of Nathaniel Hawthorne, wrote that having respect for the Puritans “is not the same thing as believing in them.”
As Hawthorne, who added an extra “w” to his last name to distance himself from a forebear who had been a judge in the Salem witch trials, put it, “Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors; and let each successive generation thank Him, not less fervently, for being one step further from them in the march of ages.”
In “Christian Charity,” Winthrop writes that if the colonists hold up their end of the covenant, their deity “will delight to dwell among us as His own people.” They are not, therefore, merely living for God, they will live with Him.
“For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.” Here, Winthrop has returned to the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:14, Jesus said to the throng before him, “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.” This comes directly after Christ has enumerated the nine blessings called the beatitudes, including, “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” And “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.” And “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”
“ The eyes of all people are upon us,” warned Winthrop, “so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken . . . we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.”
The image of a city on a hill will get passed down as an all-American beacon of hope. But it wasn’t only that to Winthrop. To him, the city on the hill was also something else, something worse—a warning. If he and his shipmates reneged on their covenant with God, the city on a hill would be a lighthouse of doom beckoning the wrath of God to Boston Harbor.
T alking about Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity” without discussing Ronald Reagan would be like mentioning Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” and pretending Whitney Houston doesn’t exist. Whitney and Reagan’s covers were way more famous than the original versions ever were.
Winthrop’s sermon, as a supposed early model for the idea of America, became a blank screen onto which Americans in general and Reagan in particular projected their own ideas about the country we ended up with. For a ten-year stretch, the 1980s, Winthrop’s city on a hill became the national metaphor. And looking into the ways the sermon, or at least that one phrase in it, was used, throws open the American divide between action and words, between what we say we believe versus what we actually do.
Like a hostess dusting off her gravy boat come Thanksgiving, Ronald Reagan would trot out Winthrop’s image of a city on a hill on special occasions throughout his political career. The night before winning the 1980 presidential election he proclaimed, “Let us resolve they will say of our day and our generation, we did keep the faith with our God, that we did act worthy of ourselves, that we did protect and pass on lovingly that shining city on a hill.”
Reagan always brightened Winthrop’s
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