The Shining City: The Idea of America

Salve, discipuli.

Eventually I will add your email addresses and make you all official members of my blog, but I have not yet done this. In truth, I am waiting to get my EPA.

Lazy, yes; dishonest, no, I am not.

Tomorrow I am giving you 9 questions on the overture from act 1 of The Crucible. You will have time to work on this on class, but if you do not finish tomorrow, I wanted you to have access to the text. It is available online: http://teacher.bsd405.org/murphybr/files/2011/11/the-crucible-act-1-and-intro.pdf. Your responses to these questions will be due Tuesday, September 10th. I am giving you a bit of time, so I am expecting some thoughtful responses supplemented with specific responses to the text itself.

Question #10 asks you to interpret an excerpt from John Winthrop's "A Model of Christian Charity." In the speech, Winthrop expresses his hope that the Massachusetts Bay Colony will serve as a "city upon a hill." This phrase, which itself is a biblical allusion, was mentioned by John F. Kennedy in a speech made in Boston prior to his inauguration  and by President Ronald Reagan in his farewell presidential address.

Take a look at this excerpt from the article, "Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan: Three Speeches, One Nation" (via http://www.politicsdaily.com/2011/01/19/eisenhower-kennedy-reagan-three-speeches-one-nation/):

Finally, in a passage that differentiates Reagan from many modern Republicans who invoke his name, The Gipper painted a poignant picture of what he had in mind when speaking of his metaphorical "shining city" on a hill.

"The past few days when I've been at that window upstairs, I've thought a bit of the 'shining city upon a hill.' The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. . . . He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free. I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still."

John F. Kennedy invoked John Winthrop, too. In fact, he spoke of the shining city in a speech in Boston two weeks before his inauguration. That is fitting, for Winthrop was a Massachusetts man like Kennedy; or, rather, the Rev. Winthrop was on his way to Massachusetts when he wrote his own "city on a hill" speech. The imagery is orginally from the bible, and Winthrop's speech was actually a sermon exhorting his followers to be a light to the rest of the world.

The most striking thing about Winthrop is that he had yet to make landfall when he wrote those words, underscoring Reagan's point that America was -- quite literally -- an idea before it was a country. At the heart of that idea is a notion that America implies opportunity for all its pilgrims, along with the chance for self-betterment.