A fresh, original history of America’s national narratives, told through the loss, recovery, and rise of one influential Puritan sermon from 1630 to the present day
In this illuminating book, Abram C. Van Engen shows how the phrase “city on a hill,” from a 1630 sermon by Massachusetts Bay governor John Winthrop, shaped the story of American exceptionalism in the twentieth century.
By tracing the history of Winthrop’s speech, its changing status through time, and its use in modern politics, Van Engen asks us to reevaluate our national narratives. He tells the story of curators, librarians, collectors, archivists, antiquarians, and other often anonymous figures who emphasized the role of the Pilgrims and Puritans in American history, paving the way for the saving and sanctifying of a single sermon and its eventual transformation into an American tale. This sermon’s rags-to-riches rise reveals the way national stories take shape and shows us how they continue to influence competing visions of the country—the many different meanings of America that emerge from its literary past.
Interviews
City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism
— New Books Network
A Conversation With The Author Of 'City On A Hill: A History Of American Exceptionalism'
— St. Louis Public Radio
City on a Hill: From John Winthrop to Donald Trump
— Patheos
America as a City on a Hill: Spiritual Reflections on Thanksgiving 2020
— Patheos
An interview with Abram Van Engen
— New Books Network Podcast
Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and Obama All Cited One Puritan Sermon to Explain America: How did a forgotten colonial text become a national origin story?
— Christianity Today
Interview with Nathan Gilmour: City on a Hill
— Christian Humanist Profiles Podcast
Interview with David Henreckson: On American Exceptionalism
— Call and Character Podcast
Reviews
“Van Engen has created an engrossing, highly recommended intellectual history that counters one of America’s founding myths.”
— Jacob Sherman, Library Journal
“Van Engen's study is a hefty work of scholarship, involving a close exegesis of Winthrop's sermon and other related texts, an account of the antiquarians unwittingly responsible for preserving his sermon and the scholarly debate over the extent to which American culture is a product of New England Puritanism.”
— Barton Swaim, Wall Street Journal
“Engagingly written, insightfully argued,” offering “fascinating, sometimes rollicking, tours through the ways Puritans have been characerized—and caricatured—over time.”
— Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Reviews in American History
Videos
A talk for the Massachusetts Historical Society.