During his presidency, Ronald Reagan used to make numerous references to America and her image in the world as “a city upon a hill.” Perhaps, the most important part of President Reagan’s legacy to his nation is this constant reminder of that image.
These calendar days, between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, America enters a period of reflection on the glories and indignities of the past and the challenges of tomorrow, to measure up to the glories and to overcome the indignities. Over the next five weeks I will be posting entries in that spirit, some laudatory yet some critical, all of them about America. This section’s title, Twilight’s Last Gleaming, can be interpreted either pessimistically (as modern America failing to measure up), or as a challenge which is properly hidden in Francis Scott Key’s immortal words. In fact, it is still up to America herself what she and the world shall “see in the dawn’s early light” of tomorrow, “a city upon a hill” or a “house of prayer” turned into “a den of thieves.” (Matthew 21:13)
My final preambular comment is this: American moral history is heavily imbued with Christian symbolism, as is evident from the quotations in this entry. It is most unfortunate and harmful that in modern America the Christian community has frequently been abusing Christian symbolism, as if the devil himself were quoting the Scriptures. In my view, the best message that America has to deliver to the world is larger than any particular religion, and therefore all culturally-specific religious references in that message ought to be taken in a larger world-historical and general-humanitarian context.
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. (Matthew 5:14)
Thus speaks Jesus in the Bible. Now, the following is an excerpt from perhaps the most momentous sermon ever given, John Winthrop’s 1630 A Model of Christian Charity---
"…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 byword through the world, we shall open the mouths of our enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake; we shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whether we are going: And to shut up this discourse with that exhortation of Moses that faithful servant of the Lord in his last farewell to Israel Deut. 30. Beloved there is now set before us life and good, death and evil in 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 Ordinance, and His laws, and the Articles of our Covenant with Him that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whether we go to possess it: But if our hearts shall turn away so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced and worship other gods, our pleasures, and profits, and serve them, it is propounded unto us this day that we shall surely perish out of the good Land whether we pass over this vast sea to possess it;---
Therefore let us choose life, that we and our seed may live; by obeying his voice and cleaving to him, for he is our life, and our prosperity."
...Judging from this sermon, I do not think that the future Governor Winthrop saw Massachusetts merely as an emerging colony of second-rate British citizens. He is talking here not even of a new nation, but of a nation chosen by God to be unlike all others. A new, New-Testament Israel, and merrie olde England would have nothing to do with it!
…Before the Founding Fathers was John Winthrop.
These calendar days, between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, America enters a period of reflection on the glories and indignities of the past and the challenges of tomorrow, to measure up to the glories and to overcome the indignities. Over the next five weeks I will be posting entries in that spirit, some laudatory yet some critical, all of them about America. This section’s title, Twilight’s Last Gleaming, can be interpreted either pessimistically (as modern America failing to measure up), or as a challenge which is properly hidden in Francis Scott Key’s immortal words. In fact, it is still up to America herself what she and the world shall “see in the dawn’s early light” of tomorrow, “a city upon a hill” or a “house of prayer” turned into “a den of thieves.” (Matthew 21:13)
My final preambular comment is this: American moral history is heavily imbued with Christian symbolism, as is evident from the quotations in this entry. It is most unfortunate and harmful that in modern America the Christian community has frequently been abusing Christian symbolism, as if the devil himself were quoting the Scriptures. In my view, the best message that America has to deliver to the world is larger than any particular religion, and therefore all culturally-specific religious references in that message ought to be taken in a larger world-historical and general-humanitarian context.
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. (Matthew 5:14)
Thus speaks Jesus in the Bible. Now, the following is an excerpt from perhaps the most momentous sermon ever given, John Winthrop’s 1630 A Model of Christian Charity---
"…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 byword through the world, we shall open the mouths of our enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake; we shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whether we are going: And to shut up this discourse with that exhortation of Moses that faithful servant of the Lord in his last farewell to Israel Deut. 30. Beloved there is now set before us life and good, death and evil in 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 Ordinance, and His laws, and the Articles of our Covenant with Him that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whether we go to possess it: But if our hearts shall turn away so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced and worship other gods, our pleasures, and profits, and serve them, it is propounded unto us this day that we shall surely perish out of the good Land whether we pass over this vast sea to possess it;---
Therefore let us choose life, that we and our seed may live; by obeying his voice and cleaving to him, for he is our life, and our prosperity."
...Judging from this sermon, I do not think that the future Governor Winthrop saw Massachusetts merely as an emerging colony of second-rate British citizens. He is talking here not even of a new nation, but of a nation chosen by God to be unlike all others. A new, New-Testament Israel, and merrie olde England would have nothing to do with it!
…Before the Founding Fathers was John Winthrop.
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