John Winthrop's The City Upon A Hill

The Puritans parallelled themselves to the Israelites fleeing the Egyptians in pursuit of the Land of Milk and Honey. Seventeenth century Puritans were under the belief that the presence and legacy of Roman Catholic rituals that presided within the Church of England would lead to God’s Wrath befalling England. The Atlantic Coast of North America was an untouched landscape promising the foundation of a new more pure and pious England. One such Puritan, John Winthrop, began to prepare parameters to found a society in the untamed Massachusetts Bay. John Winthrop imagined “the City Upon a Hill”, a magnificent society analogous to great civilizations such as Rome. John Winthrop wanted the common man to strive for virtues such as love, temperance, mercy, and gentleness. The impoverished or enslaved were to exercise patience, obedience, and faith. John Winthrop, imagined an almost collectivist society in which individuals all worked for the …show more content…
Modern America, however, would likely be viewed by Winthrop as a nation worthy of smiting. America now possesses a secular government represented by individuals from innumerable denominations. America no longer has a institutional caste that pursues to subjugate a downtrodden impoverished class. Though one could draw similarities between the Puritan view of the Poor and the Modern American perception of the unemployed as slothful and unintelligent, these are surely the last death thralls of a bygone era. John Winthrop had devised a set of parameters and instructions for his fellow compatriots to build a utopia of Puritan ideals, however, it seems that in practice such ideals failed to establish a “city upon the hill”, but rather a temporary theocracy that did not fulfill his expectations. Only after the most intense of Puritans beliefs had been evicted from American governing, did America become a great