As a City on a Hill: The Story of America's Most Famous Lay Sermon

by Daniel T. Rodgers,
The Florida Courier, December 14, 2018

As he left office in 1989, President Ronald Reagan, who did more than any other American to transform John Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity,” an obscure 17th-century New England text, into a “timeless” foundational document of nationalist pride, declared that the “city on a hill … Was built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God blessed, … still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness toward home.”