The City Upon A Hill

The Judeo-Christian Heritage That Forged America

John Winthrop’s famous sermon delivered aboard the Arabella in 1630 still resonates with modern Americans, especially his admonition:

“For we must Consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so 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 through the world.”[1]

Winthrop’s sermon has been quoted often throughout history, but it was expanded by President Ronald Reagan to “a shining City upon a Hill” in several of his speeches, including his farewell address.[2] Many modern historians claim that the Puritans have failed at this experiment, nor has America become a shining city, but is that true?

Although many modern historians cite socio-economic factors, the European migration to mainland America consisted mostly of Protestant dissenters seeking to worship God according to the dictates of conscience, as well as missionary efforts to promulgate the gospel.[3]

The Protestants were Biblically literate, highly educated, family centered, exhibited a strong work ethic, and brought their love of freedom to America’s shores, including the liberty of conscience.

Colonial America created a unique circumstance never before conceived in human history—a plurality of Christianity in which no denomination held the majority, thereby advancing America toward religious liberty both in principle and polity.[4]

Biblical Protestants flooded America’s mainland beginning in 1630, and continued steadily until the 1770s. Nearly every Colonial Charter conspicuously referenced religious freedom and the furtherance of the gospel.[5] Historian William Sweet asserts that the main purpose of English colonization was to advance Protestantism.[6]

England produced one of the most literate societies in the world. Printers supplied an endless array of affordable pamphlets, while providing public spaces to read aloud for the few illiterate.[7] Four waves of educated Protestant English families poured into mainland America over a span of 145 years, creating the original thirteen colonies.

New England: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire

Massachusetts

The Pilgrims and Puritans embraced a Congregational model which entailed independent congregations under local control, laying down the foundation of local representative government indicative of Whig Republicanism.

William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth, secured the Warwick Patent which embodied their colonial principle, “that they may bee incouraged the better to proceed in soe pious worke which may especially tend to the propagation of religion.”

The Pilgrims based their laws and legal writ on the Law of Moses, which was enacted in 1636. It is considered the first American constitution because it enumerated governmental powers and contained a bill of rights. By 1643, the Pilgrims and Puritans united under an Articles of Confederation which stated,

“Whereas wee all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and ayme namely to advance the Kingdome of our Lord Jesus Christ and to enjoy the liberties of the Gospell in puritie with peace.”[9]

The ten year long Great Migration of Puritans began in 1630. Historians note poor harvests and economic factors, but the Puritans were targeted for persecution, including physical punishments under King Charles I. The plight of the Puritans worsened as he enforced the new Anglican denomination of the Church of England.[10] Additionally, the Puritans undoubtedly remembered the threat of James I in 1604, “I shall make them conform themselves or I will harry them out of the land, or else do worse.”[11]

A successful Puritan lawyer, John Winthrop, seeking a “City upon a Hill,” and concerned with corruption and declining education in England, secured a charter for the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Approximately 20,000 middle-class Puritan families and sixty-five trained ministers, with the intent of creating a “Bible Commonwealth,” flooded New England and established decentralized Congregational Churches and local legislative bodies, paving a path for representative government which preceded the American Revolution.

The Puritans believed they were the New Israel—that God was leading them into a new promised land. Therefore, they believed that God would regard them as the Israelites, which induced them to humble themselves and pray and fast continually, believing that every mishap was God’s judgement against their sin.

Puritans quickly established communities of small family farms, churches, and schools, while instituting a strict adherence to church and government authority.[12] Their town system created success as their small freeholding farms were close together, fostering church and school centered communities. Their Protestant work ethic—the belief that vocation was a calling by God, greatly aided them as they contended with the difficulty of planting in the rocky New England soil.[13]

Education and literacy remained a hallmark of Puritan New England as they established Harvard in 1636, shortly after their arrival. They also passed the Old Deluder Satan Act in 1647 to prevent a Biblically illiterate posterity which would easily fall into deception. Mothers were the primary educators, but one teacher was required by law when a township reached fifty households, and a primary school was required when a township reached one hundred households.[14]

The Bible was the foundation of education, and the primary method of literacy. The New England Primer used theology to teach literacy, such as the letter A was learned as, “In Adam’s Fall, We sinned All.” B was learned as, “Heaven to find, the Bible Mind.” C was “Christ crucified for sinners died.” D referred to Noah’s flood, “The Deluge drowned, the Earth around.”[15]

The historian David D. Hall concludes that, “Literacy and religion were inseparable” in seventeenth-century New England, for religion “was embedded in the fabric of everyday life.”[16]

As people migrated to other areas, three more Protestant Colonies were established with religious freedom at the helm, including Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire.[17] Roger Williams’s writings and commitment to religious liberty set an early precedent for American freedom.

Rhode Island

Williams founded Providence, Rhode Island in 1636 with a commitment for religious liberty. He helped pen the Rhode Island Charter which guaranteed

“. . . to secure them in the free exercise and enjovment of all theire civill and religious rights . . . and to preserve unto them that libertye, in the true Christian faith and worshipp of God . . .”[18]

Connecticut and New Hampshire

With the lure of rich soil along the Connecticut River, Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone and John Warham, relocated their Newton and Dorchester congregations creating mass immigration into the new colony. Hooker inspired the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which some historians consider the first constitution of America. It argued for free consent of the people “to mayntayne and prsearue the liberty and purity of the gospell of our Lord Jesus.”[19]

Anne Hutchinson helped found Rhode Island, and her brother-in-law, John Wheelwright, was one of the founders of New Hampshire—both were Puritan dissenters.[20]

The Middle Colonies: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware

Pennsylvania

William Penn attempted to create another “City upon a Hill” in Pennsylvania with his “Holy Experiment,” but with religious freedom and without taxpayer supported churches. As an educated elite who became a Quaker, Penn was able to secure a charter from King Charles II who owed his father a large sum of money. Penn acquired 45,000 square miles near the Delaware River and defined rights of conscience in his Pennsylvania Charter of Liberty of 1682:

“Because no people can be truly happy, though under the greatest enjoyment of civil liberties, if abridged of the freedom of their consciences as to their religious profession and worship. And Almighty God being the only lord of conscience . . . I do hereby grant and declare that no person or persons inhabiting in this province or territories, who shall confess and acknowledge one almighty God, the creator, upholder and ruler of the world; and profess him or themselves obliged to live quietly under the civil government, shall be in any case molested or prejudiced in his or their person or estate because of his or their conscientious persuasion or practice, nor be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place, or ministry contrary to his or their mind, or to do or suffer any other act or thing contrary to their religious persuasion.”[21]

Penn began his colony as a haven for Quakers, but due to his commitment to religious tolerance and his pamphlet advertisements, the Pennsylvanian Colony grew quickly. Penn advertised in England, Scotland and Wales, but he also translated his pamphlets into German and Dutch.

Within two years, 23 English vessels carried 4,000 migrants into the colony, including 1,000 imprisoned Quakers, Amish and Mennonites. Additional migrants continued to flow into the colony, including Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, and Jews.[22]

German immigrants from the Rhine Valley poured into Pennsylvania bringing Separatist Pietists, including Mennonites, Dunkers (adult baptism), Moravians and Reformed Lutherans. The Quakers were escaping imprisonment, including English, Scottish and Irish Quakers; and the Mennonites from the Rhine Valley escaped banishment or forced slavery, including the Swiss Brethren and Anabaptists, who embraced adult baptism.[23]

Quaker and Mennonite families from the Palatine provinces of Germany founded Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1683, which eventually merged with Philadelphia. The Mennonites, who were Swiss German Anabaptists, also founded Lancaster as 2,500 immigrants settled this area, with others settling in Maryland and Virginia. By 1740, Moravian Pietists settled Bethlehem and Nazareth, and Lutheran Reformed immigrants, who fled Palatine due to the wars of Louis XIV, also settled in Pennsylvania.[24]

New Jersey

Quaker Meetinghouses dotted the coastline of the mainland from New Hampshire to South Carolina beginning in 1650 due to missionary efforts. The first Quaker migration began in 1675, and the first Quaker colony was West Jersey. Pamphlet advertisements were used to entice Quakers and within two years almost 1,000 Quakers settled in West Jersey and founded Burlington. The Quakers were the most persecuted due to their plain language and views of equality, but played a central role in resisting establishment, thereby helping pave the way for religious freedom.[25]

The Quakers established vigorous schools in each of their meetinghouses. They educated both genders, rich or poor, and included blacks and Native Americans in their schools. They set time aside each day to read the Bible and meditate on the passages.

Their schools taught the Classics, Greek, Latin, and French languages, and uniquely focused on mathematics and science. Quakers produced botanists and doctors, the first American surgery textbook, and helped establish the first general hospital in Pennsylvania. They settled in more colonies than any other faith and were politically influential. Historian Howard Brinton contends they helped secure a foundation of literacy and the American republic.[26]

New York

New York was originally a Dutch Colony named New Netherland, therefore the Dutch Reformed Church (Calvinist) was established. The director, General Petrus Stuyvesant was a strict Puritan, but due to Holland’s reputation for religious freedom, dissenters of many sects poured into the colony.

The Reformed settled the Hudson River Valley, German Lutherans settled the Mohawk River area, and French Huguenots (Calvinists), escaping religious persecution after the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685, founded New Rochelle. Catholics and Jews also migrated into New York, and Congregationalists settled on Long Island. When England conquered and renamed the colony, all Protestants were tolerated.[27]

The next great migration came with Presbyterians, who were Calvinists similar to the Puritans.[28] Initially, Puritans, Scots, and Scot-Irish combined in New England forming Congregational-Presbyterian churches. As these churches migrated to other colonies and areas such as Long Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and South Carolina, they quickly became Presbyterian. As English immigration declined, Scottish and Irish immigrants increased.[29] Many Scots settled in East Jersey, but it remained religiously diverse and eventually united with the West in 1720 to form New Jersey.[30]

The greatest immigration of Presbyterians came from the English colony in Northern Ireland, especially from 1750-1790, and eventually included Highland Scots as well. Lowland Scots, who were initially forced into the English colony in Ireland, were known as Scot-Irish when they emigrated to America. More than half the Presbyterians from Northern Ireland emigrated into Pennsylvania, creating a Presbyterian stronghold.

The Scot-Irish also experienced religious persecution in their native land as they were forced to tithe to the established church, and were barred from colleges and public office. Many settled in Boston, the Province of Maine, New Hampshire, eastern New York, and eventually migrated south to Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, the Carolinas and Florida—they also settled the American Frontier. They became the most numerous and scattered people group in the colonies, even more than the Quakers. By 1750, they influenced American culture economically and politically.[31]

Religious diversity marked the Middle Colonies, and by the early 1700’s they contained English Anglicans, Scot and Scot-Irish Presbyterians, English and Welsh Quakers, Dutch and German Reformed, Scandinavian and German Lutherans, German Pietists of many sects, Congregationalist who migrated from New England, and some Irish Catholics and Netherland Jews.[32]

The Southern Colonies: Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia

Virginia

Although historians often do not consider the first permanent English settlement of Jamestown in 1607 as a Christian settlement, the gospel was of primary importance in Richard Hakluyt’s appealed to Elizabeth I for the colonization of Virginia in 1584. Commissioned by Francis Drake, Hakluyt penned, “that generous and goodly action in planting and peopling that country to the better propagation to the gospel of Christ, the salvation of numerous souls . . .”[33]

The gospel was of primary importance in the first Virginian Charter from King James I as well. Article III states,

“We, greatly commending, and graciously accepting of, their Desires for the Furtherance of so noble a Work, which may, by the Providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the Glory of his Divine Majesty, in propagating of Christian Religion to such People, as yet live in Darkness and miserable Ignorance of the true Knowledge and Worship of God . . .”[34]

After three failed attempts under Elizabeth the I, her cousin James I established the first permanent English colony on America’s mainland. Jamestown lagged in development, but the Puritan emigration into New England changed the trajectory of America.

Maryland

Maryland was founded as a haven for Catholics by George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, when King Charles I granted land from Chesapeake Bay to the Potamic River. Maryland’s Act of Concerning Religion stated that colonists

“. . . professing to beleive in Jesus Christ, shall from henceforth bee any waies troubled, Molested or discountenanced for or in respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise thereof.”[35]

Lord Baltimore welcomed Protestants also, and soon Protestants emigrated to Maryland as well.[36]

North and South Carolina

The charter for the Carolinas included religious toleration, and although they began with an Anglican majority, by 1710, the dissenters combined equaled that of the Anglicans, including Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers.

Georgia

James Oglethorpe obtained a charter for Georgia with a humanitarian focus. Although he was Anglican, he granted religious freedom and eventually the dissenters also equaled the Anglicans, including Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers, and Lutherans.

Swiss Reformed, French Huguenots, and German Palatinates also emigrated into Georgia, including German Protestants from Salzburg fleeing persecution under a Catholic archbishop. As in New York, some Portuguese Jews fleeing persecution also settled in Georgia.[37] Oglethorpe corresponded with Zinzendorf to settle Moravians in Georgia as well.[38]

The Shinning City Upon a Hill

The Colonies experienced two Great Awakenings which added many more believers to an already well churched country. This resulted in adding the Methodist faith to the Colonies. Methodist circuit riding preachers traversed 400-500 miles on horseback, risking death due to severe weather and native attacks. Many died young.

The historian William Sweet contends that the Puritan wing of the Reformation produced freedom of conscience, individual rights, self-government, and the freedom of speech and press.[39] Historian John Witte posits that the American Founders had six principles by the time of the Revolution including: liberty of conscience, free exercise of religion, religious pluralism, religious equality, and a rejection of an established religion.[40]

Sweet concludes that religion is the “most neglected phase of American history” and that a distinctly American religious culture emerged by the eighteenth century which effected moral, political, and intellectual society.

Historian Patricia Bonomi concluded that religion “underlay all thought” in the eighteenth century, and religion still maintains a greater cultural role in America than in any other Western country due to the Colonial religious institutions which permeated every aspect of society.[41] Historian James Hunter purports that even at the birth of the Republic, religious diversity maintained a “thoroughly Protestant ethos.”[42]

Alexis de Tocqueville’s American tour in 1831 resulted in his assessment that

“. . . America is still the place in the world where the Christian religion has most restrained true power over souls; and nothing shows better how useful and natural religion is to man, since the country where today it exercises the most dominion is at the same time the most enlightened and most free.”[43]

Tocqueville concluded that Christianity was not only pervasive in America, but produced the most intellectual thought and the most freedom.

On the eve of the American Revolution, the Mainland Colonies contained about 1,500 local churches, including 450 Congregationalist Churches, 300 Anglican Churches, 250 Quaker Meetinghouses, 160 Presbyterian Churches, 100 Baptist Churches, 95 Lutheran Churches, 78 Dutch Reformed Churches, and 51 German Reformed Churches. About two-thirds of the Colonists were churched, and the Colonies also contained Catholic Churches and Jewish synagogues.[44]

The Colonists also remained true to their commitment to higher education. In addition to Puritans founding Harvard (1636), the Congregationalists founded Yale (1701) and Dartmouth (1769), a school which trained Native Americans as Christian missionaries. The Anglicans founded William and Mary (1693), and Anglicans and Presbyterians established King’s College, now Columbia (1754). The Dutch Reformed founded Queen’s College in New Jersey (1766), Baptists founded the College of Rhode Island (1764), and New Light Presbyterians founded the College of New Jersey, later renamed Princeton University (1746).[45]

The Protestants who fled religious persecution established the Judeo-Christian foundation which created the most free and most prosperous nation to ever exist on earth. America became the “City upon a Hill” well beyond what Winthrop could imagine or hope for—and a shining one at that.

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[1] https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/Winthrop%27s%20City%20upon%20a%20Hill.pdf

[2] Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address to the Nation Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/251303https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/farewell-address-the-nation.

[3] William Warren Sweet, Religion in Colonial America (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1942), 66.

[4] William Warren Sweet, Religion in Colonial America, 322.

[5] Robert T. Miller, "Religious conscience in colonial New England," Journal of Church and State 50, no. 4 (2008): 661+. Gale OneFile: LegalTrac (accessed March 19, 2025). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A197492987/LT?u=vic_liberty&sid=summon&xid=4e5078e5.

[6] William Warren Sweet, Religion in Colonial America, 3.

[7] Jonathan Barth, "Liberty of Conscience is Every Man's Natural Right: Historical Background of the First Amendment," Journal of Policy History 35, no. 4 (2023): 435. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/908319.

[9] Scott Douglas Gerber, "Law and Religion in Plymouth Colony," British Journal of American Legal Studies 8, no. 2 (2019): 170; 173-174; 185.

[10] Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America, 164; George Capaccio, Religion in Colonial America, 35.

[11] William Warren Sweet, Religion in Colonial America, 20.

[12] N. Ray Hiner, “The Cry of Sodom Enquired into: Educational Analysis in Seventeenth-Century New England,” History of Education Quarterly 13, no. 1 (1973): 3. https://doi.org/10.2307/366961.

[13] William Warren Sweet, Religion in Colonial America, 100-101.

[14] Ole’ Deluder Satan Act, https://outofthearchives.org/2014/03/25/battling-the-old-deluder-with-a-school/.

[15] John Cotton and Westminster Assembly, The New-England Primer Improved for the More Easy Attaining the True Reading of English: To Which Is Added the Assembly of Divines, and Mr. Cotton’s Catechism (Boston: Printed by Edward Draper, at his Printing-Office, in Newbury-Street, and Sold by John Boyle in Marlborough-Street, 1844), 14.

[16] David D Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England, 1st Harvard University Press paperback ed. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1990), 3-8; 34-44.

[17] William Warren Sweet, Religion in Colonial America, 90.

[18] Rhode Island, Royal Charter, 1635. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/ri04.asp.

[19] Thomas Hooker, Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/1639-fundamental-orders-of-connecticut.

[20] William Warren Sweet, Religion in Colonial America, 94.

[21] William Penn, Pennsylvania Charter of Liberty, 1682. https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/1701-pennsylvania-charter-of-liberties.

[22] George Capaccio, Religion in Colonial America, 50-53.

[23] Rosalind J. Beiler, “German-Speaking Immigrants in the British Atlantic World, 1680-1730,” OAH Magazine of History 18, no. 3 (2004): 21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25163678.,177.

[24] William Warren Sweet, Religion in Colonial America, 210-30.

[25] William Warren Sweet, Religion in Colonial America, 52; 158-59.

[26] Howard H. Brinton, “The Quaker Contribution to Higher Education in Colonial America,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 25, no. 3 (1958): 234–50. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27769819.

[27] George Capaccio, Religion in Colonial America, 35; 49; 58; William Warren Sweet, Religion in Colonial America, 24; 199-207.

[28] Scott Douglas Gerber, "Law and Religion in Plymouth Colony," 170.

[29] William Warren Sweet, Religion in Colonial America, 245-246.

[30] Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America, 263.

[31] William Warren Sweet, Religion in Colonial America, 245-253.

[32] Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America, 271.

[33] Richard Hakluyt, John Winter Jones, Robert Fabyan, Giovanni da Verrazzano, Ribault, Thomas Hackett, and Great Britain. Laws, statutes, etc. Divers voyages touching the discovery of America and the islands adjacent: collected and published by Richard Hakluyt ... in the year 1582. London: Printed for the Hakluyt society, 1850. Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926 (accessed May 1, 2025), xxx. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CY0103338316/SABN?u=vic_liberty&sid=summon&xid=57634e1c&pg=36.

[34] James I, King of England, First Charter of Virginia, Hoboken, N.J.: Generic NL Freebook Publisher, 2000. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=2008513&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

[35] Maryland, An Act Concerning Religion, 1649. https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2200/sc2221/000003/000002/html/toler01r.html

[36] George Capaccio, Religion in Colonial America, 58-59.

[37] William Warren Sweet, Religion in Colonial America, 39-44.

[38] George Fenwick Jones and David Noble, “Bringing Moravians to Georgia: Three Latin Letters from James Oglethorpe to Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 80, no. 4 (1996): 847–58. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40583599.

[39] William Warren Sweet, Religion in Colonial America, 18.

[40] John, Jr. Witte, "Reclaiming the Blessings of Religious Liberty: Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment," Ecclesiastical Law Journal 25, no. 3 (09, 2023): 283. https://go.openathens.net/redirector/liberty.edu?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/reclaiming-blessings-religious-liberty-religion/docview/2860446975/se-2.

[41] Patricia U. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America, Updated ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 3, 217.

[42] James Davidson Hunter, “Pluralism: Past and Present,” Journal of Law and Religion 8, no. 1/2 (1990): 273. https://doi.org/10.2307/1051282.

[43] Alexis de Tocqueville, Eduardo Nolla, and James T Schleifer, Democracy in America, Vol I, English ed. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2012), 473.

[44] Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America, 342.

[45] William Warren Sweet, Religion in Colonial America, 313-316; Middleton, Arthur Pierce. “Anglican Contributions to Higher Education in Colonial America.” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 25, no. 3 (1958): 251–68. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27769820.