In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an American Myth

218 Pages·2012·4.569 MB·English

by  Richard M. Gamble

IN SEARCH OF THE CITY
ON A HILL
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IN SEARCH OF THE CITY
ON A HILL
The making and unmaking of an
American myth
RICHARD M. GAMBLE
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Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane
11 York Road Suite 704
London New York
SE1 7NX NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
© Richard M. Gamble, 2012
CAMELOT
Words by ALAN JAY LERNER Music by FREDERICK LOEWE
Copyright © 1960 (Renewed) by ALAN JAY LERNER and FREDERICK LOEWE
Publication and Allied Rights Assigned to CHAPPELL & CO., INC.
All Rights Reserved
Used by Permission
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any
information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission from the publishers.
First published 2012
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-6232-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
1. A foreign country 15
2. The good land 41
3. A land of light, 1630–1838 67
4. A spectacle to the world, 1838–1930 91
5. The revolutionary city, 1930–1969 121
6. The shining city, 1969–1989 141
7. The once and future city 165
A note on sources 185
Notes 189
Index 203
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the help of foundations,
librarians, archivists, friends, family members, colleagues, students, and
editors. To all of them, I offer this simple note of thanks.
The H. B. Earhart Foundation once again provided generous financial support
for a sabbatical and for travel and research in the United States and England.
Hillsdale College’s president and board of trustees granted me a year’s leave for
research and writing. Indispensable assistance with archival and other historical
research came from the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, the New-York
Historical Society in Manhattan, the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia,
the library of Tyndale House in Cambridge, UK, and Hillsdale College’s Mossey
Library. The staff of these institutions patiently tracked down the most obscure
references, documents, and resources. They gave of their time and talent, and
opened their doors to me. A special word of thanks to the Massachusetts Historical
Society and the New-York Historical Society for permission to quote from their
collections and to the Alfred Music Company for permission to reproduce some
of the lyrics to “Camelot.” St. Edmund’s College and Tyndale House gave me an
academic home in Cambridge from which to explore John Winthrop’s world.
Receptive audiences at the University of California, Berkeley, the Institute
for the Study of Christianity and Culture, and Patrick Henry College provided
the chance for me to air my ideas and gain helpful feedback on early versions
of the chapter on Ronald Reagan. Their questions and comments reassured
me that the reading public would indeed see why a wide-ranging conversation
about the city on a hill needed to be launched.
Chad Van Dixhoorn shared his expertise in seventeenth-century English
religious history and his personal collection of rare Puritan commentaries. As
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viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
so often in the past, he and his wife and family blessed me with warm hospi-
tality. My extended family also hosted me on various research trips, and my
brother Ken read early drafts of several chapters.
Thanks are due also to a number of my students at Hillsdale College,
especially the members of my seminar on the city on a hill who always
surprised me with their fresh insights. They and others at Hillsdale taught
me more than I realize. At the risk of leaving out someone, I would like to
thank David Landow, Liz Essley, Jonathan Gregg, Joshua Herring, and Alex
Meregaglia. They made connections I had missed and offered help with
research, often on short notice. Thanks also to Harold Siegel, my colleague in
the history department, for help with Latin translations.
For the third time, my former editor and current agent Jeremy Beer
helped me shepherd a book from idea to finished manuscript. He took an
early interest in the project, pushed me on to completion, and sharpened my
thoughts and words. And thanks, finally, to Rhodri Mogford, my editor at
Continuum, and the rest of the staff in London and New York for their enthu-
siasm and careful attention to every detail of this book.
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Introduction:
The hidden city
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.
MATTHEW 5.14
Shortly after 11:00 a.m. on 4 March 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon
Brown addressed a joint session of the United States Congress. He devoted
much of his speech to the enduring ‘special relationship’ between the US and
Great Britain. But the event immediately on his mind was Barack Obama’s
landmark inauguration a few weeks earlier as America’s 44th president. On
that day, the Labour Party leader claimed, the ‘American people wrote the latest
chapter in the American story’. He spoke of 20 January as a day of renewed
hope for the world when ‘billions of people truly looked to Washington DC as
a “shining city upon the hill”, lighting up the whole of the world’.
By calling the nation’s capital – and by extension, America – a ‘city on a
hill’ and the ‘light of the world’, Brown recited one of the most familiar lines
in the liturgy of the American civil religion. The only surprise was that it was a
British prime minister leading in this national ritual. The cadences of Brown’s
affirmation of faith did not flow as smoothly and naturally for him as they
would have for an American speaker, but the invocation of American excep-
tionalism was unmistakable nevertheless. Early in his presidency, Obama
seemed deliberately to avoid the language of exceptionalism conjured up by
the ‘city on a hill’, but Brown’s use of this sacred rhetoric suggested that even in
the era of ‘Hope and Change’ these words still captured the essence of America
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