Winthrop and the Beginning of the American Dream

One of the noteworthy contrasts between Puritan ideology and the polytheism that dominated much of the North American continent before the Arbella’s arrival at Massachusett’s Bay is Winthrop’s sense of urgency to create a difference between his band of believers and everyone else. He argues in “A Model of Christian Charity” that the biblical narrative “teacheth us to put a difference betweene Christians and others” (310), just as “the Israelites were to putt a difference betweene the brethren of such as were strangers though not of the Canaanites” (311). While indigenous tribes were often at war with one another and accepted similar distinctions between tribal identities, they were not unwilling to consider the spiritual beliefs of other traditions and even to combine those traditions with their own. Roger Williams observes in his Key into the Language of America that the Native Americans he encountered in the seventeenth century would “generally confesse that God made all: but then in speciall, although they deny not that English-mans God made English Men, and the Heavens and Earth there! yet their Gods made them and the Heaven, and Earth where they dwell” (356). The monotheism of the European Christians, on the other hand, impressed upon them the need to convert Native Americans to the one “true” faith, and their identification with the Israelites of the Hebrew Bible led them to view the natives as enemies standing in the way of Canaan, or the promised land. Whereas indigenous tribes developed sacred stories based on the landscape that they had inhabited for centuries, the Puritans were making their sacred story up as they went along. There is great irony in the fact that English settlers would claim Jewish history as their justification for settling in New England. In fact, the great sense of urgency that motivated the Puritans to tame the wilderness and purge it of the pagan tribes living there might be said to derive from their need to create a place for themselves in the world.

Winthrop’s sense of entitlement to the “promised land” of New England is similar to that of Catholic Spain, which viewed military prowess as an extension of divine favor, but the band of Puritans at Massachusetts Bay preserved only a tenuous loyalty to England and was more concerned with its own utopian project: the New Jerusalem, or the “Citty upon a Hill” that Winthrop describes at the end of his sermon (317). By claiming Jewish stories of conquest, the Puritans were also claiming spiritual status as a chosen people. The power of this view cannot be overstated, because it has led to a consistent pattern of Manifest Destiny in American history.

What evidence did the Puritans feel they had to justify such a claim?

After discussing the divinely ordained hierarchies of wealth and poverty, Winthrop moves through a series of familiar New Testament themes concerning love. Comparing the community on board the Arbella to a body, Winthrop invokes some of the most beautiful language of 1 Cornithians, namely, his paraphrase 1 Cor. 12:26, which claims that “[i]f one member suffers, all suffer with it; if one be in honour, all rejoyce with it” (312). Winthrop’s subsequent shift to Adam’s fall from grace seems logical, since it allows him to explain that Christ came to reinstitute love between humanity and God. The Holy Spirit also “gathers together the scattered bones of perfect old man Adam and knitts them into one body againe in Christ whereby a man is become againe a liveing soule” (313). This is brilliant storytelling on Winthrop’s part, showcasing his ability to coordinate the themes of the New Testament into a metaphor for the group of religious refugees on board his ship. It is inspirational speaking at its finest.

However, the radical thrust of Winthrop’s message appears later in the sermon, as he begins to build toward his climactic vision of the “Citty upon the Hill.” This is where the logic falls apart, as far as the claim to literal identification with ancient Israel, but the story that Winthrop is telling most certainly does not fall apart, as he is able to make the metaphor of the promised land seem like an obvious outgrowth of the Puritan mission. Winthrop concludes that “…for the worke wee have in hand, it is by a mutuall consent through a speciall overruleing providence, and a more then an ordinary approbation of the Churches of Christ to seeke out a place of Cohabitation and Consorteshipp under a due forme of Government both civill and ecclesiasticall” (315). He is speaking of a theocracy here, in the conflation of civil and ecclesiastical government. This is a radical departure from Christ’s stark division between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man, a division that St. Augustine pursues at great length in The City of God. Winthrop’s synthesis of civic and spiritual goals has continued to plague American politics, despite its contradiction of Christ’s teaching in Matthew 22:17 and 21, where he suggests that Christians should not refuse to pay tribute to Caesar, nor shirk their taxes, despite the ideological conflicts between the then-secular Roman government and the small band of Christ’s followers.

More troubling than this sleight of hand is Winthrop’s explicit claim to a “speciall overruleing providence.” This claim underpins his association of Puritan society with ancient Israel, yet it is unclear how this special providence came to be. Did God speak to Winthrop out of a burning bush, as he did to Moses? Was Winthrop struck blind in the street, as Paul was on the road to Damascus, with the voice of God iterating a proclamation of special providence? No evidence of such an event exists in Winthrop’s biography, except for his gradual disillusionment with political and economic corruption in England. Readers must conclude that Winthrop considered himself something akin to a prophet; otherwise, there would be no basis for him to claim a providence that was not shared by all Christians the world over.

By the time Winthrop reaches his conclusion, the logical contradiction has become hardwired into his message, allowing him to conclude: 

When God gives a speciall Commission he lookes to have it stricktly observed in every Article….Thus stands the cause betweene God and us, wee are entered into Covenant with him for this worke, wee have taken out a Commission, the Lord hath given us leave to drawe our owne Articles wee have professed to entreprise these Accions upon these and these ends, wee have hereupon besought him of favour and blessing. (316)

In the Hebrew tradition, Moses did not decide that he would enter into a covenantal relationship with God–such an arrangement was envisioned by God and proposed to Moses through direct revelation. Notice the subtle subversion of the phrase “the Lord hath given us leave to draw our own Articles.” Where and when did God give Winthrop this liberty to write up his own covenant?

The Puritans were not blind to this tenuous claim to divine favor. In fact, most of their memoirs are riddled with anxiety about whether or not they have experienced enough providence to justify their own salvation. Some, like Michael Wigglesworth, will be tormented by fears of having been irreparably damned. Others, like Mary Rowlandson, will spin off of Winthrop’s term “speciall providence” and coin phrases like “strange Providence” that allow them to interpret even captivity among the Native Americans as a sign of God’s favor.

The power of the myth outlined in “A Model of Christian Charity” and extended throughout the rest of the Puritan literature is that it allowed the new English settlers to construe anything that happened to them as evidence that they had been sent into the wilderness of the New World with a mandate from God to claim promised land as the fulfullment of their most idealistic dreams. The leap from the dream to the proposed reality begins here in Winthrop’s sermon.