City On A Hill

A fresh, original history of America’s national narratives, told through the loss, recovery, and rise of one influential Puritan sermon from 1630 to the present day In this illuminating book, Abram Van Engen shows how the phrase “City on a Hill,” from a 1630 sermon by Massachusetts Bay governor John Winthrop, shaped the story of American exceptionalism in the twentieth century. By tracing the history of Winthrop’s speech, its changing status throughout time, and its use in modern politics, Van Engen asks us to reevaluate our national narratives. He tells the story of curators, librarians, collectors, archivists, antiquarians, and often anonymous figures who emphasized the role of the Pilgrims and Puritans in American history, paving the way for the saving and sanctifying of a single sermon. This sermon’s rags-to-riches rise reveals the way national stories take shape and shows us how those tales continue to influence competing visions of the country—the many different meanings of America that emerge from its literary past.

From the pilgrims to Las Vegas, hippie communes to the smart city, utopianism has shaped American landscapes. The Puritan small town was the New Jerusalem. Thomas Jefferson dreamed of rational farm grids. Reformers tackled slums through crusades of civic architecture. To understand American space, Alex Krieger looks to the drama of utopian ideals.

Tells the story of a city on a hill where infighting between different groups causes the city to lose its light.

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.

We are now living in post-Christian times, when Christianity no longer is the prevailing influence on the mind and heart of our culture. But we cannot compromise. More than ever before, it is imperative that Christians understand and embrace the biblical pattern for the church. Philip Graham Ryken knows that the changing face of America makes the need for the church to remain steadfast even more important. City on a Hill will provide readers with a deeper understanding of how to live for Christ in the twenty-first century: go back to the model set out in the first century. Sure to be an encouragement and challenge to anyone concerned about the effectiveness of the church today.

We are cities set on a hill(beacons to help people discover the joy and fulfillment of Christian life. Encouraging readers to share Gods love, noted Christian artists, including Dan Haseltine (Jars of Clay), Leigh Nash (Sixpence None the Richer), Charlie Peacock, Peter Furler (Newsboys), Mac Powell (Third Day), Julie Miller, and Terry Taylor (DA), offer glimpses into their spiritual journeys that capture the passion of their faith. Readers will discover practical insights into the relationship between worship and witness and find honest advice about proclaiming Christs message to the world. This book complements the contemporary worship album of the same name, which features these artists. (Royalties from this book will be donated to Empowering Lives International in East Africa.).

The American history of the 'city on a hill' metaphor from its Puritan beginnings to its role in Reagan's American civil religion and beyond.