The Bible in American Law and Politics. John R. Vile
One of the arguable defects of the original U.S. Constitution is that although it indicated a difference between a “natural-born” citizen and those who were naturalized, it did not provide a definition of which groups qualified for either (Vile 2016). Nor did it indicate whether it was possible for an individual to be a citizen or a resident of a state without thereby also being a citizen or resident of the United States. In the Dred Scott decision of 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately decided that blacks were not and could not be citizens of the United States (and thus part of “We the People”). After the Civil War, the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) subsequently overturned this decision and declared that all persons born or naturalized within the United States were citizens thereof.
Although English law had suggested that subjects born within the realm were forever subjects thereof, America necessarily adopted a more flexible approach, which permitted individuals who immigrated to the United States to become citizens and those who chose to leave to become citizens elsewhere. Michael Walzer has observed that biblical covenants were sometimes associated with descendants of a particular person, such as Abraham, and at other times extended to a “mixed multitude” (Walzer 2012, 2), such as those who accompanied Moses out of Israel. This led to two different models of citizenship: “There is a permanent, built-in tension between the birth model and the adherence model. The first favors a politics of nativism and exclusion (as in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah), the second a politics of openness and welcome, proselytism and expansion (and even forced conversion), as in the stories of Ruth” (Walzer 2012, 3) and, he might have added, Rahab.
In examining the controversies over citizenship that led up to the Civil War, Carrie Hyde believes that Philippians 3:20 may have played a part in American understandings. Although the King James Version read that “our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ,” in the early part of the nineteenth century, the word “conversation”—which had ceased to mean who a person was rather than what they said, which came from the Greek word politeuma, the origins of the word “politics”—was increasingly translated as, and understood to mean, “citizenship.” It was thus so translated in the Bible published in 1808 by Charles Thomson, the former secretary of the Continental Congress (Hyde 2018, 55, 58).
This new understanding had two consequences that Hyde traces through such works of literature as David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829) and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and Dred (1856). One was to suggest worldly disengagement emphasizing the world to come, and perhaps even justifying earthly injustices like those perpetrated by the institution of slavery as a way to prepare one for a better life to come. The other, however, was to pose a more perfect heavenly citizenship against a deficient idea of citizenship such as that perpetuated under slavery. In Hyde’s words, “the value of theological models of citizenship . . . is that they provided a clear alternative to the convention-bound structure of positive law” (2018, 61). For those who recognized that the kingdom of heaven would consist of members of all races, it seemed only logical that they should also be included as citizens 103in an ideal republic. Moreover, to the extent that the American polity extended protections to all, it could further be identified with the heavenly city or New Jerusalem to come.
See also Slavery; Stowe, Harriet Beecher; Thomson, Charles; Walker, David
For Reference and Further Reading
Hyde, Carrie. 2018. Civic Longing: The Speculative Origins of U.S. Citizenship. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Vile, John R., ed. 2016. American Immigration and Citizenship: A Documentary History. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Walzer, Michael. 2012. In God’s Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew Bible. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
City upon a Hill
Few, if any, metaphors have better encapsulated the thought of American Pilgrims than an image from John Winthrop’s Scripture-laden essay (usually described as a sermon) from 1630, delivered aboard the ship Arbella or possibly simply circulated in written form (Rodgers 2018, 27–28), entitled “A Model of Christian Charity.”
Winthrop’s speech reflected the fact that Puritans considered themselves, like ancient Israelites, to be in a special agreement, or covenant, with God: “Thus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into covenant with Him for this work, we have taken out a commission, the Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles we have professed to enterprise these actions upon these and these ends, we have hereupon besought Him of favor and blessing” (Vile 2015, 20). Like covenants within the Old Testament, such a covenant required the Pilgrims to keep their side of the agreement lest “the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us, be revenged of such a perjured people, and make us known the price of the breach of such a covenant” (Vile 2015, 20).
Although he did not cite chapter and verse, Winthrop quoted from Micah 6:8 about the responsibility of the people “to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God” (Vile 2015, 20). As he ended his speech, Winthrop exhorted his fellow passengers with a phrase that he borrowed from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:14. After he said that his followers should be “the light of the world,” Winthrop observed that
we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of the 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 throughout the world, we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake, we shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going. (Vile 2015, 21)
Winthrop drew from Moses’s words to Israel in Deuteronomy 30:15–16 when he observed, “Beloved there is now set before us life and good, death and evil, in 104that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His ordinance, and His laws, and the article of our covenant with Him that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in this land whither we go to possess it” (Vile 2015, 21). Winthrop thus further identified New England as a type of New Israel with the trip from the Netherlands to the United States being likened to that of Moses and his people crossing the Red Sea.
Although this speech is sometimes interpreted as the beginning of American exceptionalism that portrays the nation as uniquely ordained and blessed by God, Winthrop clearly suggested that if the colony were to remain in God’s graces, it would need to be faithful to Him. Being an exceptional settlement could easily bring about curses as well as blessings if the Pilgrims do not keep up their side of the covenant.
As a native of Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy was particularly fond of the city-on-the-hill analogy and used it in a speech that he gave to his constituents before leaving for Washington, DC. Citing Winthrop’s reference to this city, Kennedy observed, “Today the eyes of all the people are truly upon us—and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state, and local, must be as a city upon a hill—constructed and inhabited of men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities.” Like the Pilgrim settlers, Kennedy said it was important for modern leaders to be men of courage, judgment, integrity, and dedication (Kennedy 1961).
President Ronald Reagan was especially enamored with the central metaphor in Winthrop’s speech, which Reagan typically stated as “a shining city