The Puritans and Massachusetts 1630 P3

John Winthrop, the leader of the Great Puritan Exodus that sailed to America establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony,  affirmed their desire to be “as a city upon a hill” (quoting from Jesus’ Words in the Bible, Matthew 5:14) where all the people of the earth could see their uncorrupted colony and would say, “The Lord make us like that of New England.” Winthrop also warned those with him that, “If we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword of something very bad through the world."

Throughout America’s history, civic leaders have returned to Winthrop’s vision.  Numerous US presidents have repeated that Bible phrase of becoming a “city on a hill,” uncluding John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Cater, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, William J. Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barak Obama as well as many national, state, and local leaders.

Content Sourced From The American Story, The Beginnings. By: David Barton and Tim Barton