John Winthrop — was an early Puritan leader whose vision for a godly commonwealth created the basis for an established religion that remained in place in Massachusetts until well after adoption of the First Amendment. It was, however, eventually superseded by ideas of separation of church and state. Image via Wikimedia Commons , painted by Charles Osgood , public domain. He was rising in English legal circles when he decided to settle in America, where he hoped Puritanism, the reformed Protestantism that he embraced, could flourish.
Winthrop emigrated in and would serve many terms as governor of Massachusetts, in which capacity he exercised generally good judgment that helped the colony through its early perilous years. Winthrop helped to establish a commonwealth where voting was limited to male church members, and he generally favored rule by an aristocratic elite, subject to some democratic control.
When he survived a bad accident with his horse, he took this as a divine signal: God was calling him to create a holy community in the wilderness of New England. Winthrop was chosen to serve as governor of the fledgling Puritan colony. Before leaving Southampton or perhaps onboard the flagship Arbella , scholars disagree on the exact timing , Winthrop delivered a sermon titled " A Modell of Christian Charity ," also known as "A City Upon a Hill. Drawing upon the book of Deuteronomy, he concluded, "L et us chose life that we, and our seed may live, by obeying His voice and cleaving to Him, for He is our life and our prosperity.
In Boston, Winthrop assumed leadership of the colony. His energies seemed prodigious and inexhaustible. That year he also founded New London, Conn. After his father's death in Winthrop surrendered his Massachusetts public offices, concentrating on Connecticut. Elected governor in , he made Hartford his permanent residence.
After he was annually chosen chief executive the remainder of his life. During he successfully defended the colony's claims against the Dutch and New York's governor Edmund Andros. Winthrop was more concerned with science than theology. All Rights Reserved. Not only did he lead a group of Puritan colonists from England to America in , but he oversaw the prosperity of the colony while governor off and on from to his death in he was elected governor prior to their emigration.
He is famous for delivering his speech entitled "A Modell of Christian Charity," where he compared the flight of the Puritans to the Book of Exodus, and described their future colony as a "city on a hill," a place for others to observe an ideal Christian society. His also was involved in the banishment of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, although he still maintained a friendship with Williams until his death in While at Trinity College, Cambridge, he embraced a Puritan understanding of theology.
Winthrop left Cambridge to marry the first of his four wives, manage his family's estate, practice law, and serve as a justice of the peace. In the s, tensions mounted between the Puritans and King Charles I when the Puritans accused Charles, who had married a Catholic French princess, of seeking to return the Church of England closer to Rome in theology and liturgy.
As a result of a royal crackdown on religious dissenters, Winthrop lost his job and became increasingly involved in Puritan plans to leave England. Winthrop, along with other Puritans, obtained a charter from the king to plant the Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England. He was named governor of the colony in while the group prepared to set sail, finally leaving England on April 7, He described the future colony as an ideal Puritan society, where colonists could uphold their obligations to God and one another.
Winthrop believed that the world was watching this grand Puritan experiment and, in an echo of Jesus's words in Matthew chapter , he declared that Massachusetts "shall be as a city on a hill. Since then, Winthrop's borrowed imagery has become a staple in the rhetoric of politicians from both sides of the aisle, including John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.
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