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A City Upon a Hill: How the Sermon Made America shows the United States at its best - and sometimes at its worst. The sermon can serve as a national conscience, and can also be viewed as the first form of mass media. Not only can the nation's history be traced in the landmark sermons preached from its pulpits and in front of its memorials, but in fact it was often the sermon that inspired and helped define America. Larry Witham presents the first serious examination of religious rhetoric and how it both reflected and inspired public opinion and policy throughout American history. Witham analyses the influence of religion on the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, John Brown, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many other eminent figures. A City Upon a Hill also features a timeline connecting famous sermons and inspirational speeches to important events in American history. Larry Witham is the author of The Measure of God, Where Darwin Meets the Bible and By Design: Science and the Search for God. As a journalist, he has won the Religion Communicators Council's Wilbur Award three times, several prizes from the Religion Newswriters Association, and a Templeton Foundation award for his articles on science and religion. He has appeared on C SPAN, the CBN '700 Club' and Fox News. He lives in Burtonsville, Maryland. 'The sermon is America's characteristic form of speech, and this book is a brilliant exposition of that form. From Winthrop to King and beyond, we speak and hear of our destiny as a nation in the voice of the sermon. This is an invaluable guide.' - Peter Gomes, author of The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Heart and Mind
About the author
Larry Witham is the author of The Measure of God, Where Darwin Meets the Bible, and By Design: Science and the Search for God. As a journalist, he has won the Religion Communicators Council's Wilbur Award three times and has received several prizes from the Religion Newswriters Association as well as a Templeton Foundation award for his articles on science and religion.
Summary
Pivotal moments in U.S. history are indelibly marked by the sermons of the nation's greatest orators. America's Puritan founder John Winthrop preached about "a city upon a hill", a phrase echoed more than three centuries later by President Ronald Reagan in his farewell address to the nation; Abraham Lincoln's two greatest speeches have been called "sermons on the mount"; and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" oration influenced a generation and changed history. From colonial times to the present, the sermon has motivated Americans to fight wars as well as fight for peace. Mighty speeches have called for the abolition of slavery and for the prohibition of alcohol. They have stirred conscientious objectors and demonstrators for the rights of the unborn. Sermons have provoked the mob mentality of witch hunts and blacklists, but they have also stirred activists in the women's and civil rights movements. The sermon has defined America at every step of its history, inspiring great acts of courage and comforting us in times of terror. A City Upon a Hill tells the story of these powerful words and how they shaped the destiny of a nation.
A City Upon a Hill includes the story of Robert Hunt, the first preacher to brave the dangerous sea voyage to Jamestown; Jonathan Mayhew's "most seditious sermon ever delivered," which incited Boston's Stamp Act riots in 1765; early calls for abolition and "Captain-Preacher Nat" Turner's bloody slave revolt of 1831; Henry Ward Beecher's sermon at Fort Sumter on the day of Lincoln's assassination; tent revivalist/prohibitionist Billy Sunday's "booze sermon"; the challenging words of Martin Luther King Jr., which inspired the civil rights movement; Billy Graham's moving speeches as "America's pastor" and spiritual advisor to multiple U.S. presidents; and Jerry Falwell's legacy of changing the way America does politics.
A City Upon a Hill provides a history of the United States as seen through the lens of the preached words—Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish—that inspired independence, constitutional amendments, and mili-tary victories, and also stirred our worst prejudices, selfish materialism, and stubborn divisiveness—all in the name of God.
