How America Became “A City Upon a Hill”
How America Became “A City Upon a Hill”
Section titled “How America Became “A City Upon a Hill””
Metadata
Section titled “Metadata”- Author: Craig Lambert
- Full Title: How America Became “A City Upon a Hill”
- Category: #articles
- URL: https://www.neh.gov/article/how-america-became-city-upon-hill
Highlights
Section titled “Highlights”- According to Miller, this sermon called Puritans to model radical communal solidarity. It had nothing to do with the American Dream, nothing to do with bettering one’s life, nothing at all to do with making money or getting ahead. In fact, Miller claimed, Winthrop specifically rejected all such ideas. Going it alone, pulling ahead of others, getting rich or even trying to—these were the very dangers that Winthrop sought to guard against. Society’s success depended instead on mutual affection, being “knit together in this work as one man.” According to Miller, the Puritans exhibited “a mighty conviction of solidarity,” a “living cohesion” and “concept of a fellowship united in a common dedication.” Unlike today, Miller insisted, New England theorists thought of society “not as an aggregation of individuals, but as an organism functioning for a definite purpose, with all parts subordinate to the whole, all members contributing a definite share, every person occupying a particular status.”
- When Puritans started making money, their purposes collapsed. “A hundred years after the landings, they were forced to look upon themselves with amazement, hardly capable of understanding how they had come to be what they were,” he wrote. They had lost sight of their cause and plan, their purpose and devotion. For Miller, the point of this failure was clear: The demise of the Puritans did not arise from external opposition; rather, it came about from within. It was caused by the Puritans’ own success.