As a City on a Hill: The Story of America's Most Famous Lay Sermon

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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 A

Reviews

"World's 2018 Books of the Year"
"Rodgers superlative book is an intellectual page-turnera muscular examination of the culture and theology behind the Model, a cogent study of the methods by which a nation gives itself meaning through the inventive interpretation of documents from the past, and a sharp-eyed accounting of how Winthrops city on a hill phrase came to be used in modern political parlance."---Patrick T. Reardon, Chicago Tribune
"In a wonderful new book, As a City on a Hill: The Story of Americas Most Famous Lay Sermon, distinguished intellectual historian Daniel Rodgers recaptures Winthrops original meaning and explains why its relevant to Americans today. . . . [A] masterful history."---Robert Tracy McKenzie, Christianity Today
"[Daniel Rodgers] argues that the comparison of America to a city on a hill that politicians often use, quoting from John Winthrops 1630 lay sermon Model of Christian Charity, is not true to the sermons original sentiment and distorts the historical legacy of the passage. . . . It wasnt until Cold Warera writers and thinkers revisited the Model in search of evidence of Americas universal nature (ignoring the texts historical context) that it regained popularity. Through a winding, enthralling timeline, Rodgers successfully illuminates the strange history of a text that we think we know so well that we barely know it at all." * Publishers Weekly *
"As a City on a Hill is a masterful synthesis. Spanning four centuries, the book deftly narrates the intellectual history of Americas most famous lay sermon."---Seth Dowland, Reading Religion
"Rodgerss As a City on a Hill is an exceptional piece of scholarship. Eminently readable and sophisticated in its analysis, scholars of nationalism, religion, political history, and the colonial Americas will find much material of interest, as will general audiences seeking to learn more about the shifting contours of American nationalism and about how historians, public officials, and the public work work perpetually to remake both national history and the means by which it is propagated. This is an important book."---William S. Cossen, H-Nationalism
"A model of clearly written scholarship."---Marvin Olasky, World (25 Good History Reads)

Author Bio

Daniel T. Rodgers is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University. His books include Age of Fracture, winner of the Bancroft Prize; Atlantic Crossings; Contested Truths; and The Work Ethic in Industrial America. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.