City upon a Hill

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For the series of Christian albums, see City on a Hill (series)

City upon a hill is a phrase that is associated with John Winthrop's sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity," given in 1630. The phrase is derived from the metaphor of Salt and Light in the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus given in the Gospel of Matthew. Winthrop warned the Puritan colonists of New England who were to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony that their new community would be a "city upon a hill," watched by the world:

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… we shall be made a story and a by-word throughout the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God… We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us til we be consumed out of the good land whither we are a-going.^[1]

It was long believed that the speech was given aboard the Arbella not long before landing; recent research^{[citation needed]} has shown, however, that it was almost certainly given in England prior to departure. In any case, it inspired the Puritans with a sense of holy duty that would be crucial if they wanted to increase their chances of survival in the New World.

Winthrop believed that all nations had a covenant with God, and that because England had violated its religious covenant, the Puritans must leave the country. This was an expression of the Puritan belief that the Church of England had fallen from grace by accepting Catholic rituals. John Winthrop claimed that the Puritans forge a new, special agreement with God, like that between God and the people of Israel. However, unlike the Separatists (such as the Pilgrims), the Puritans remained nominally a part of the Anglican church in hopes that it could be purified from within. Winthrop believed that by purifying Christianity in the New World, his followers would serve as an example to the Old World for building a model Protestant community.

The idea that their community was specially ordained by God had a powerful effect on the Puritan society of New England. Of course, breaking a covenant with God has dire results. In order to avoid incurring God's wrath by breaking their promise, the Puritans sought to maintain perfect order in their society. Even the smallest sins were punished harshly by the courts; no one was allowed to live alone for fear that they would succumb to the temptation to sin; parents were to instruct their children and servants diligently in the Word of God; church attendance was mandatory; marriage was required. These conventions and institutions molded an extremely stable and rigidly-structured society in New England, a stark contrast with the unstable and loosely-bound society of the early British colonies in the Chesapeake Bay region, such as Jamestown.

The neighborhood now known as 'Beacon Hill' in Boston, Massachusetts is named after this idea, that it serve as a beacon of light to the world. Tradionally, this area's demographic has been White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs).

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