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How an obscure Puritan sermon came to be seen as a founding document of American identity and exceptionalism "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.

Cities and towns --- City and town life. --- Sociology, Urban. --- History. --- Winthrop, John, --- Winthrop, John, --- Winthrop, John, --- Influence. --- 1600-1775 --- United States --- United States. --- History --- A Model of Christian Charity. --- Abolitionism. --- African Americans. --- Alexis de Tocqueville. --- American exceptionalism. --- American nationalism. --- American studies. --- Americans. --- Anne Hutchinson. --- Annexation. --- Arbella. --- Atlantic World. --- Barack Obama. --- Bourgeoisie. --- British America. --- Calvinism. --- Capitalism. --- Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. --- Chosen people. --- Chris Christie. --- Christianity. --- City on a Hill. --- City upon a Hill. --- Civilization. --- Colonization. --- Debt. --- Donald Trump. --- Economic Life. --- Emigration. --- England. --- Exceptionalism. --- Existentialism. --- Frederick Jackson Turner. --- Generosity. --- George W. Bush. --- God. --- Great power. --- Historian. --- Imperialism. --- Indigenous peoples. --- Injunction. --- John Calvin. --- John L. O'Sullivan. --- John Winthrop. --- Laborer. --- Liberia. --- Literature. --- Manifest destiny. --- Martin Luther King, Jr. --- Massachusetts Bay Colony. --- Massachusetts Historical Society. --- Nationalism. --- New England. --- New Israel. --- New Nation (United States). --- Old Testament. --- Patriotism. --- Perry Miller. --- Pessimism. --- Piety. --- Political culture. --- Politics. --- Polity. --- Poor relief. --- Princeton University Press. --- Protestantism. --- Puritans. --- Quakers. --- Radicalism (historical). --- Republican National Convention. --- Rhetoric. --- Righteousness. --- Ronald Reagan. --- Samuel Eliot Morison. --- Scrutiny. --- Seminar. --- Sermon. --- Shareholder. --- Slavery in the United States. --- Slavery. --- Society of Jesus. --- Soviet Union. --- Speechwriter. --- Stanford University. --- Suggestion. --- Tax. --- Theocracy. --- Theology. --- Thomas Paine. --- United States. --- Usury. --- Vernon Louis Parrington. --- Wealth. --- White-Jacket. --- William Lloyd Garrison. --- Woodrow Wilson. --- Works of mercy. --- World War I. --- World War II. --- Writing.