The Story of America’s Most Famous Metaphor: “A City Upon A Hill”

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Exclusions and more terms apply. This is Nikki Glaser from the Nikki Glaser podcast. On a more serious note, I'm still thinking about that commercial with Tom Brady and Snoop Dogg hating on each other. Because when you listen to the reasons for hating someone or something, you realize just how stupid they really are. There is too much hate in this country and it's got to stop. So join us at I heart and standing up to it. If you see hate, speak up, call it out.

And you can learn more by following at what's up with hate. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. If you want to know about the history of America, it's imperative that you know the role that the Bible played in shaping our country. Here to share another story is Robert Morgan, who's the author of 100 Bible verses that made America defining moments that shaped our enduring foundation of faith.

Let's take a listen. The pilgrims as we know them were Puritans fleeing religious persecution in England. And after their arrival on the Mayflower in 1620, thousands upon thousands of more Puritans immigrated to America. They were some of England's best trained scholars, barristers, educators and clergymen. On April the 8th, 1630, a fleet of four ships left the Isle of Wight carrying yet another 700 Puritan immigrants to the New World. Among them was John Winthrop, a noted English lawyer who was distressed by the persecution directed towards his fellow Puritans from King Charles I. Joining Winthrop aboard the flagship Arabella were his two young sons, but his wife Margaret wasn't able to join him until the next year. John and Margaret, in an unusual act of devotion, forged a plan for keeping their love alive during their separation.

They agreed together to think about each other for an hour every Monday and Friday afternoon. Well, at some point during or maybe before or perhaps just after the voyage, Winthrop prepared and preached one of the most influential sermons in American history. He called it a model of Christian charity. It's also known as the city upon a hill sermon. In this speech, Winthrop, who is a lawyer, not a clergyman, painted a compelling vision of the future of American society as he imagined it to be.

And borrowing the words of Jesus from Matthew 5.14, offered an image that has been repeated for nearly 400 years by presidents and patriots alike that America is a shining city on a hill. Winthrop said this to his fellow Puritans. The only way to provide for our posterity is to follow the counsel of the prophet Micah, to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man. We must entertain one another in brotherly affection.

We must be willing to abridge ourselves of superfluities for the sake of one another's necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together with all meekness and 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 this work as members of the same body. So shall we then keep the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us as His own people and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth than formerly we have been acquainted with. He went on to say, We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding settlements across the land, The Lord make it like that of New England. For we must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill, the eyes of all of the people are upon us.

Beloved, He said, there is now set before us life and good, death and evil, and that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God and to love one another, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His ordinances and His laws that we may live and be multiplied, and that the God of our fathers may bless us in the land whether we go to possess it. It was there that Winthrop called America a city on a hill for all the world to see, or as Ronald Reagan liked to say, a shining city on the hill. The past few days when I've been at that window upstairs, I've thought a bit of the shining city upon a hill. The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important because he was an early pilgrim, an early freedom man. He journeyed here on what today we call a little wooden boat, and like the other pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free. I've spoken of a shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it, but in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace. A city with pre-ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.

That's how I saw it and see it still. Winthrop's vision of America is compelling, but it bears remembering that Jesus Christ first coined that phrase, and he gave it in his Sermon on the Mount to refer not to America herself as such, but to his followers, the church on this earth. He told us in Matthew chapter 5, that's the way that Jesus used that image, and at one time or another almost every president has reminded us of this iconic symbol of American freedom that our nation, the home of the brave and the land of the free, is a shining city on a hill. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. A special thanks to Robert Morgan, author of 100 Bible Verses That Made America, defining moments that shaped our enduring foundation of faith by a book by two. The story of a city upon a hill here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories. Every day we set out to tell the stories of Americans past and present, from small towns to big cities, and from all walks of life doing extraordinary things, but we truly can't do this show without you. Our shows are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and make a donation to keep the stories coming.

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