“Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid” (Matthew 5:14, KJV).
On board the Aribella, a ship filled with Puritans headed to the New World, as it lay at anchor off Southampton in the Spring of 1630, John Winthrop delivered a sermon on the stark choice they had between following God’s plan for them or being “shipwrecked” by their own folly. The words have echoed down through the centuries:
He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, ‘may the LORD make it like that of New England.’ 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, and so cause Him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.
How then were they to avoid being such a “by-word”? He advised them to “follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God.” Winthrop recognized in his sermon that there will always be rich and poor, but that the wealthy should “honor the LORD with thy riches,” and create a society where “the rich and the mighty should not eat up the poor, nor the poor and despised rise up against and shake off their yoke.” He commanded them to “delight in each other; make others’ condition are own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together…” These actions are to come from the heart, and not out of compulsion.
In his farewell message, over 350 years later, Ronald Reagan deliberately echoed Winthrop:
The past few days when I’ve been at that window upstairs, I’ve thought a bit of the ‘shining city upon a hill.’ That phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined… After 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm.
The Gipper did warn, though, that American exceptionalism — the shine of that “city” — would fade unless there were a “resurgence of national pride” that would only last if “it’s grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge.”
An informed patriotism is what we want. Are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?… So, we’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important – why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant.
To which I would add that we should teach what George Washington’s perspective was on the circumstances of our founding: “The man must be bad indeed who can look upon the events of the American Revolution without feeling the warmest gratitude towards the great Author of the Universe whose divine interposition was so frequently manifested in our behalf.”
This author and his wife are doing what we can (please see below), but as citizens and parents, we need to pressure our schools to get back to properly teaching American history, not by glossing over our darker pages, but by showing how the principles and uniqueness of our founding so often led to overcoming them. We need to teach at home as well, for as Reagan also pointed out, “all great change in America begins at the dinner table.”
If it should come to pass that more of us on both sides of this stark ideological divide should be reacquainted with American exceptionalism, the principles of our founding, and the sacrifices and faith in a higher purpose that have led us thus far, then some common ground may be found. It may not be many, just a few who are reasonable and approachable, who find such common ground, but many great undertakings begin with small steps. By doing thus, “So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace,” as Winthrop exhorted in his sermon.
We are the world’s foremost superpower. The danger of our demise lies not so much from forces abroad, but, as with Rome, erosion from within. We are left with the stark choice Lincoln presented to us: “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”
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