City upon a Hill

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For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken ... we shall be made a story and a by-word throughout the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God ... We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us til we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.

It was long believed that the speech was given aboard the Arbella not long before landing; recent research^{[citation needed]} has shown, however, that it was almost certainly given in England prior to departure. In any case, it inspired the Puritans with a sense of holy duty that would be crucial if they wanted to increase their chances of survival in the New World.

Winthrop believed that all nations had a covenant with God, and that because England had violated its religious covenant, the Puritans must leave the country. This was an expression of the Puritan belief that the Anglican Church had fallen from grace by accepting Catholic rituals. John Winthrop claimed that the Puritans forge a new, special agreement with God, like that between God and the people of Israel. However, unlike the Separatists (such as the Pilgrims), the Puritans remained nominally a part of the Anglican church in hopes that it could be purified from within. Winthrop believed that by purifying Christianity in the New World, his followers would serve as an example to the Old World for building a model Protestant community.

The idea that their community was specially ordained by God had a powerful effect on the Puritan society of New England. Of course, breaking a covenant with God has dire results (as Noah's fellow men learned the hard way). In order to avoid incurring God's wrath by breaking their promise, the Puritans sought to maintain perfect order in their society. Even the smallest sins were punished harshly by the courts; no one was allowed to live alone for fear that they would succumb to the temptation to sin; parents were to instruct their children and servants diligently in the Word of God; church attendance was mandatory; marriage was required. These conventions and institutions molded an extremely stable and well-structured society in New England, a stark contrast with the unstable and loosely-bound society of the early British colonies in the Chesapeake Bay region, such as Jamestown.

John F. Kennedy quoted Winthrop in his famous "city upon a hill" speech at the Massachusetts State House in Boston just 11 days before his inauguration. In the speech Kennedy laid out the four essential qualities that he hoped would characerize his government; Courage, judgment, integrity and dedication.

Winthrop's speech was famously quoted in the 1989 Farewell Address of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, although he emphasized his own interpretation of the phrase.