What is the title of the Winthrop sermon that framed the colonial community in ideal terms?

Study for the Chronological Movements in American Literature Test. Explore key literary developments with multiple-choice questions, flashcards, and detailed hints. Get ready for your exam!

Multiple Choice

What is the title of the Winthrop sermon that framed the colonial community in ideal terms?

The idea being tested is how early colonial writers framed the community as an ideal, virtuous model for others through a religious covenant. John Winthrop’s sermon, A Model of Christian Charity, does this most directly. Delivered in 1630 to the Puritan settlers aboard the Arbella, it presents the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a “city upon a hill”—a community bound together by mutual love, shared burdens, and a careful observance of Christian charity. The sermon argues that the colony must maintain unity, generosity toward the poor, and public moral conduct so that God’s favor will rest on them and their example will inspire other Christians. This framing is different from the other works listed. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is Jonathan Edwards’s sermon about individual judgment and divine wrath, not a communal ideal. Common Sense is a later political pamphlet advocating independence and self-government, not a religious covenantal community vision. The Declaration of Independence is a political statement declaring independence from Britain, not a sermon about forming an ideal community. So the Winthrop sermon best fits the prompt because it explicitly constructs the colonial project as an exemplary, God-centered community for others to imitate.

The idea being tested is how early colonial writers framed the community as an ideal, virtuous model for others through a religious covenant. John Winthrop’s sermon, A Model of Christian Charity, does this most directly. Delivered in 1630 to the Puritan settlers aboard the Arbella, it presents the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a “city upon a hill”—a community bound together by mutual love, shared burdens, and a careful observance of Christian charity. The sermon argues that the colony must maintain unity, generosity toward the poor, and public moral conduct so that God’s favor will rest on them and their example will inspire other Christians.

This framing is different from the other works listed. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is Jonathan Edwards’s sermon about individual judgment and divine wrath, not a communal ideal. Common Sense is a later political pamphlet advocating independence and self-government, not a religious covenantal community vision. The Declaration of Independence is a political statement declaring independence from Britain, not a sermon about forming an ideal community. So the Winthrop sermon best fits the prompt because it explicitly constructs the colonial project as an exemplary, God-centered community for others to imitate.

More practice questions