Analysis: A Model of Christian Charity

Date: 1630

Author Name: Winthrop, John

Genre: political sermon

Summary Overview

Growing religious persecution convinced many Puritan leaders that leaving England was their only viable option in order to openly practice their beliefs. England’s claim to much of the east coast of North America presented them with an opportunity to establish a society based on those beliefs. John Winthrop had been selected leader of the first major group of settlers and during the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean on the Arbella, he set out his vision for the new colony. Although not an ordained minister, he wrote a sermon to convey these ideas to others on his ship. It contained philosophical guidelines for the rules the members would make to govern their lives. It also carried a message of the possibilities that lay ahead and a statement regarding how members were to be role models for others. The vision he had of the unique role the colony could play in history became an enduring theme in US history.

Document Analysis

The founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was principally a religious undertaking. It was the Puritans’ belief in God, especially the belief that God had a special mission for them, that formed the foundation for the colonists’ life in New England. Winthrop spelled out that vision of the colony in his sermon to his fellow Puritans. While Winthrop’s ideas were meant for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, specifically, phrases like “city upon a hill” have been quoted by others throughout history to describe the United States in general.

As Winthrop wrote, “the end is to improve our lives to do more service to the Lord . . . and work out our salvation under the power and purity of his holy ordinances.” This was the Puritans’ intent when they left England for the New World. As previously mentioned, pressure had been building on the Puritans to accept the teachings of the Anglican Church. Theological differences with the Anglican Church made it impossible for the Puritans to do so. They believed in a strict adherence to the Bible, and they believed that the only way they could practice their faith in better service of God was to leave England altogether.

As the leader of the Winthrop Fleet, as the group of ships was known in 1630, Winthrop needed to inspire the people for the difficult task of setting up a new life in a seemingly uncivilized wilderness. An affirmation of who they were was conveyed through his understanding of how this needed to be done. In speaking about those traveling to the New World, Winthrop wrote, “when God gives a special commission He looks to have it strictly observed in every article.” Thus the religious mission and message given to the Puritans had to be carried out. In this passage, he refers to the harsh judgment made against people in the Bible who failed to carry out their missions from God. “We are entered into covenant with Him for this work. We have taken out a commission.” Thus, Winthrop urges his fellow colonists to use the colony as a means to carry out God’s commandments.

Using biblical passages and statements based on Puritan theology, Winthrop helped develop a sense of unity among the people. The introductory paragraph was a clear reminder of the doctrine of predestination in which the Puritans believed. As mentioned toward the end of the sermon, Winthrop was certain that if the voyage was completed successfully, it would be a sign that God had predestined them to undertake the dangerous voyage to the New World.

Although a few shareholders and members of the movement had previously gone to New England to scout out the best location for the settlement, virtually all the shareholders were on the ships traveling with Winthrop. Members of the movement who had decided to wait for future sailings had given or sold their shares to those who left in 1630. This was to make it easier for quick decisions to be made on issues vital to the colony. It also ensured that no shares would pass out of the hands of church members due to unforeseen circumstances to people who were not in the church. Thus the vision for the colony would remain unchanged, except as conditions in the colony might affect it.

As is obvious from all the references to the rich and poor in the sermon, the Puritans were capitalists, not socialists. Although they accepted certain biblical commandments to have mercy on the less fortunate, this did not include a belief in total economic or political equality. The Puritans believed that God decided the circumstances of every individual’s life, including wealth or poverty.

According to Winthrop, the accumulation of fortune gives glory to God, not the expenditure of it on pleasurable things. “We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities . . . .” Wealth must be used to help those in need, if the proper situation exists. This situation occurs when a person has the resources to help one who is in need, where the only other option is divine intervention. By not helping those in need, the wealthy person could be seen to be testing God, which is something Christians are warned not to do. Thus the Puritans are called to accumulate wealth in order to serve God better, in giving to the church and in helping those in need.

According to this sermon, the church and its members are on earth only for the glory of God. While this is in line with mainstream Christian theology, Winthrop does bring the Puritan/Calvinist perspective to the situation. In his three reasons for the existence of the rich and poor, Winthrop clearly states that people are conduits for God’s love and mercy. For certain people to be willing to undertake this task increases the glory given to God. Winthrop goes on to say that with the existence of both the fortunate and the unfortunate, there are more tasks for the Holy Spirit to do, which again increases God’s glory. Finally, the differences among people help build a stronger community. In addition, those who are rich are wealthy because of God, and as such, all that they have belongs to God. Thus, under Winthrop’s theology, those who are rich more fully reflect God’s glory and are better able to be God’s faithful servants. And so a community based on charity would be one that would please God and earn success in the New World.

What Winthrop sees as two guiding lights for life in the new colony, “Justice and Mercy,” are to be combined in such a way that it leads to success, as well. Winthrop believed that justice and mercy are both required of all people. For him, one without the other is an inadequate response to the world and to the dictates of the Christian religion. It is the balancing of these considerations that forms the foundation for the way in which the colony members should work together and govern themselves. The outcome he seeks for the colony is to exceed anything in the past. He wrote, “Whatsoever we did, or ought to have done, when we lived in England, the same must we do, and more also, where we go.” Thus, Winthrop seeks perfection in the new colony.

As they moved forward in this experiment, it was clear to Winthrop that a strong government was needed. As he wrote, “For it is a true rule that particular estates cannot subsist in the ruin of the public.” If the individual is to not only survive but prosper, then there must be a civic organization that ensures that the proper policies are implemented. The passages of the sermon that are not printed in this text emphasize even more strongly the capitalist nature of the colony and the need for a government in total alignment with Puritan doctrine.

The end of the sermon holds its most famous passage. “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” The image of the city is taken from a passage in Matthew 5:14 in the New Testament of the Bible. This is another indication of Winthrop’s belief that there is a specific role that the colonists will play in the world, based on their relationship with God. Like the Israelites in the Old Testament, the Puritans saw themselves as a chosen people. Their government was to be “both civil and ecclesiastical.” The world would be watching them, they believed, because they had this special status and were attempting to create a new society based solely on their faith. In this sermon Winthrop is saying that success of the colony will bring glory to God. In a similar vein, failure will bring the swift judgment of God upon them.

In the following decades of American history, this passage would be applied to the United States as a whole. The related ideas regarding the role of the United States in the world, known as manifest destiny and American exceptionalism, come in part from Winthrop’s vision for his colony. Although these terms originated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the ideals they embody have been a part of American heritage at least since the period of the Revolutionary War. Manifest destiny was used as a rallying cry for the westward expansion of the United States, seen as a policy ordained by God. Winthrop believed in predestination, so the idea that God had predestined the westward expansion of the United States can be a logical continuation of this thought. American exceptionalism is the idea that the United States has a special role to play in the world, that it is exceptional among all other nations. The fact that Winthrop saw the Puritans as special people in God’s eyes was extended to the position of the entire country in the world, according to the beliefs of many Americans throughout history.

In addition to the continuation and expansion of his ideas throughout American society, Winthrop’s use of the biblical image of the city on a hill has been adopted by various politicians for their own purposes. Bridging party affiliation, the image has appealed to many politicians, both conservative and liberal, throughout the history of the United States. For example, in the second half of the twentieth century both President John F. Kennedy and President Ronald Reagan would use this image in speeches to describe a part of their vision for the United States.

Winthrop’s idea of a city on a hill, however, was more closely tied to religious principles than to secular unity. He believed that the colony would succeed only if it retained religious unity. This was one reason full citizenship was reserved for full members of the church. Only those who affirmed the teachings of the Puritan faith could remain in the colony. He warns his fellow travelers not to “deal falsely” with God, for in doing so, God would withdraw his help from the colonists.

Although Winthrop’s sermon is most famous for its image of the city upon a hill, the climax of the sermon truly occurs in the following paragraph. The closing paragraph focuses on the image of Moses’s speech to the Israelites just prior to his death and the Israelites’ entry into the Promised Land, which is reflected in the drama of the Puritan immigrants about to enter the New World. In the Bible, Moses gives his people a choice: they can follow God with total obedience or face destruction. This choice is repeated by Moses’s son, Joshua, after the Israelites have settled in the Promised Land. Winthrop’s expectation was that those who were settling the colony would respond with a strong affirmation, just as the Israelites had responded to Joshua.

This is the point toward which the sermon had been building, a call to the settlers to reaffirm their faith in God and dedication to the task that lay before them. The Israelites entering the Promised Land facing overwhelming odds and an uncertain future, combined with the knowledge that the Israelites succeeded, were the two images that Winthrop wanted each person to have in his or her mind. He most certainly believed that the colonists could give glory to God through their successful occupation of a new land, just as the Israelites had done centuries earlier. For Winthrop, there was a simple correlation between the two groups. Success was assured by the colonists adhering to their faith. The Puritans saw themselves as chosen people who, just like the Israelites, were special people given an opportunity by God to give glory through the settling of a new land. “We are a company professing ourselves fellow members of Christ, . . . we ought to account ourselves knit together by this bond of love and live in the exercise of it, if we would have comfort of our being in Christ.”

Records indicate that during the first year about twenty percent of those who had settled in Massachusetts Bay Colony died and another twenty percent returned to England on the ships that arrived in 1631. However, we also know that because of the strength of its religious foundation and the desire of other Puritans to leave England, the Massachusetts Colony became the dominant political and economic group in New England with more than twenty thousand immigrants during its first decade.

Bibliography

Bremer, Francis J. John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father. New York: Oxford UP, 2003. Print.

Wood, Andrew. Summary of John Winthrop’s “Model of Christian Charity.” Communications Department, San Jose State University, n.d. Web. 25 May 2012.