John Winthrop And John Adams

One reason for the Colonial Americans’ growth in faith is the fact the era was abundant with religious figures who strove to lead people to God and created guidelines for them to live by. The people of Colonial America were blessed to abide in an “enchanted world of wonders.” These wonders were no doubt brought on by the hand of God, and the recognition of this fact caused new religious leaders to rise up and help people focus on living Godly lives despite the secular distractions that they were presented with. One Puritan leader, John Winthrop, stated, “That which the most in their Churches maintain as a truth in profession only, we must bring into familiar and constant practice, as in this duty of love we must love brotherly without dissimulation, we must love one another with a pure heart fervently we must bear one another’s burdens…” Winthrop not only wanted each individual person to maintain a stronger focus on faith in daily life, he also wanted them to use their faith to unite together, and his Model of Christian Charity showed the people how to accomplish that. Many people tried to abide by these teachings and pass them onto their children before they made their own way in the changing, confusing world because many parents feared their children would “Fall un’wares in Fowler’s snare.”

Winthrop is assuming, for the most part that his hard work and strong vision will lead the people of the new colony to create a perfect place to be where everyone helps each other. There are people who are arguing with each other over the law and others who still pray to God to save them. In document C, the person who wrote the poem is obviously struggling to survive themselves. They pray to god to help them, and in return they will serve God. The value of Winthrop’s vision ultimately boils down to the colonists no longer needing to pray to a higher power because they have all the help they need from the people within the colony.

On January 12th, 1587 in Edwardstone, England, John Winthrop was born. He is mostly known for being the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the most prominent character of New England’s Puritan founders. When he promised to sell his English estate and take his family to Massachusetts if his company was transferred to America, he was elected governor. Though he had traditional and somewhat upper-class outlooks, because of his cleverness and knowledge, the colony effectively steered though its early risks. In 1630, John wrote and read the nonprofessional speech that would be called, “A Modell of Christian Charity”, in which he described the plans to keep the Puritan society sturdy in faith as well as the issues they would need

In Edmund S. Morgan’s, The Puritan Dilemma, it was evident that John Winthrop focused his entire life around glorifying God, in turn creating a government that did the same. This ideology translated into the way he shaped and structured Puritan society. Winthrop first focused on the formation of a community of unity and harmony, then built a government that fostered it. All of the governmental structures in place were supporting one main focus of the Puritan society being “a city on a hill.” Citation Further, Puritan society was to act as an example for the surrounding colonies of godly living. Harmony was backed by their ideals of

The Puritan Dilemma is a biography written by Edmund S. Morgan about the life of John Winthrop, a lawyer who had money beyond belief and was one of the key pieces to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The story starts off by explaining the family line of Winthrop. I found it interesting that Winthrop spent very little time with his family, his dad in particular. His father was a very wealthy businessman and spent most of his time guiding the family fortune. As Winthrop grew older is life began to become more grounded in faith in God. He had a strong faith, but was tempted with worldly pleasure and so became almost corrupt, but not corrupt enough to lose his name. Soon the 1620’s rolled around and the depression affected the town of Suffolk which

Winthrop looked onto the bible for much of his guidance on how to deal with things going on in the colonies. Many of the puritans believed in how everything Winthrop was doing was correct. One of good accomplishments towards the puritans was that he made them realize they needed to be literate and he set an educational foundation for them. Since the puritans trusted his word and followed him they knew that everything had to be done by bible reading and writing because that’s how they can ingest God’s word; along with this they made sure to keep a spiritual journal. By 1647 many of colonies such as Charlestown, Dorchester, Salem, etc. followed his lead by implying many of the households to have a reading and writing instructor which made the view of John Winthrop even better.

Upon examining the Book of Micah, there are many similar themes which Winthrop draws from in his speech. In the Book of Micah, God punishes the Israelites for breaking their religious covenant with their “lack of justice and honesty”. Micah then speaks with God to find out how they may gain God’s trust and love again to which God demands “to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” which Winthrop quotes directly. Winthrop is acknowledging the failures of previous Christians suggesting that they themselves are vulnerable to God’s wrath if they behave inappropriately, evidence that Winthrop does not believe his Puritans are perfect.

John Winthrop (1588-1649) was a prominent religious leader of one of the first groups of Puritan settlers to leave England for the freedom they sought in the United States – otherwise known as the New World. Winthrop had not always been a religious orator, but he became more determined in his religious beliefs as he matured into adulthood. Winthrop grew to believe that his soul, specifically, had been chosen by God to be saved, and it was this belief that led him to become part of the Puritan movement in England (Winthrop, 1825). However, at the time of this movement, Winthrop found himself and the other religious leaders under the rule of King Charles I, who was very openly anti-Puritan. Puritans across the country found their religion under

John Winthrop was born around the 1500’s in England which at the time had corruption due to overpopulation and not enough money. He decided that it needed to be more peace against prosecution of religion and joined a group called the Puritans. He and his group decided that they should be the ones to have a safe community as Puritans. He and his fellow people set out on a voyage where a book was written called A Model of Christian Clarity. For example, “A Model of Christian Clarity” says that “All men being thus (by divine providence) ranked into two sorts, rich and poor; under the first are comprehended all such as are able to live comfortably by their own means duly improved; and all other are poor according to the former distribution”(Winthrop 178). This means that the Puritans should be able to live the way they choose whether it be religion or rich/poor. He also emphasized helping people and not wanting anything in return. He also wanted to emphasize that the land should not be based on status and that everyone should help each other to have a more Puritan life. Winthrop believes that everyone should live a more Christian life and have compassion to the poor if you are wealthy by selling all of your things soon in order for them to eat. In “A Model of Christian Clarity”, Winthrop concludes with Deuteronomy 30 which says “Beloved, there is now set before us life and food, death and evil, in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another,

John Winthrop is a significant figure in American history because he, along with a few others, laid the foundation for America as we know it today and put in place many of the ideals and principles that we still base our government and lives on in the present. Winthrop was with the group who were the first to govern a colony from within the colony, helped introduce and influence the people to adopt a government in which the people ruled and elected those making the laws and “ruling” over them, introduced the idea of separation of Church and State, helped establish a program of public and private education and a grammar school in Boston as early as 1635. Some people even call John Winthrop the “Father of New England” and “America’s Forgotten Founding Father.”

As Peyser puts it, both Emerson and Winthrop were “deeply suffused with a sense of America’s missionary destiny, of the new nation’s emancipatory message to the rest of the world,” (13). However, Winthrop and Emerson held two divergent visions of what a utopian society would look like and how to go about manufacturing grand social, political, and spiritual change. Winthrop, an American colonial leader and Puritan in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, cultivated an unabashedly Christian vision of a utopian society. Although Emerson was himself “the product of nearly two centuries of New England Puritanism,” and was likewise deeply religious, his utopian vision was less specifically Christian than Winthrop’s (Nicoll 334).

John Winthrop is incredibly smart. The sermon that he delivered while en route to Massachusetts was the perfect thing to prepare his new colonists for life in a foreign land. Backing up his calls for brotherly love and forgiveness with direct scripture quotes, he lays out why exactly the Puritans need to act justly and kindly. The question and answer format of his sermon is laid out in an easy to understand logic that seems to be backed up with doctrine at every step. He even explains why class divisions exist among not just those in England (which they were escaping), but why they naturally will exist in America as well. His sermon gives way to the kind of governor that he would be in the coming years, one who is very

“But preachers, like the crafty fellows they are, have found that men would rather not change their lives to fit Christ’s rule and so they have adjusted Christ’s teaching to the way men live” (Sir Thomas More). Governor John Winthrop wrote City Upon a Hill for his fellow Puritans. It was to encourage them to purify their connection with God and to obtain perfect order in their society. A city upon a hill is a phrase that means that it is out there for everyone to see and it is an example of how everyone should be. Winthrop’s City Upon a Hill reveals a vision of a religious utopia for the New England colony. John Winthrop was a devoutly religious Puritan elder who led a large migration of Puritans from England to America in 1629 and became the

Adapting a Puritan lifestyle drastically affected Winthrop’s perspective on the world and his role in it. He knew that he could not completely disconnect himself from it “as monks and hermits do” (Morgan 6) so he had to adapt to the struggle of finding a balance of his role of worshiping God and “lending his hand to shape [the world]” (Morgan 14).

The Colonial period of American Literature is laced strongly with religion and the establishment of a national history. Both the Puritans and the Pilgrims lived their lives passionately devoted to living out the Bible as they interpreted it, and found their identity deeply rooted in religion. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, under the guidance of John Winthrop, were to serve as an example, a “city on a hill,” and all of civilization was to take note. Throughout Peace Like a River, Reuben Land looks upon Jeremiah’s intense faith with the same reverence that Winthrop intended the world to look upon his civilization with. Reuben, watching his father pace beyond the bounds of the truck bed, is astonished when he does not fall, but instead continues “walking on the hand of God” (Enger 18). During this moment, Reuben must have felt the same alarm and subsequent astonishment that those watching Winthrop build his miniature empire felt. Both Winthrop and Jeremiah Land walked