In 1630, during the rush for the ‘New World’, an immigrant Puritan lawyer from England, John Winthrop, sailing aboard a ship named Arbella, delivered to his fellow immigrants, a religious sermon which would become historic for the reason that it elevated a beautiful biblical metaphor of moral exemplary-ness into a secular adage of leadership and development.
John Winthrop had chosen a text out of the book of Matthew (5:14-16), from the ‘Sermon on the Mount’, and in which Jesus was saying:
“A city that is set upon a hill cannot be hid”. Meaning that there’s no hiding place for the one who stands upon the elevated plane. Who dares to climb the moral high ground, like Caesar’s wife, must live above board.
The ‘city upon a hill’ metaphor, which was later adopted by politicians to project America as a beacon of hope, freedom and self government, was excised from a larger biblical piece by Jesus, which read thus:
“You are the light of the world. A city that is set upon a hill cannot be hid. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it giveth light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works”.
And whereas Jesus sounded sanctimonious in the projection of righteous exemplary-ness, quite the flip of it, John Winthrop, in his aboard-the-ship sermon, had parodied Jesus’s text with a more secular undertone that drew the attention of his audience to that famous Robert Ingersoll’s trinity of democratic virtues, namely of “duty, honor and country”.
By the way Winthrop’s parody did not open with Jesus’s existential affirmative of “You are the light of the world”. And perhaps it was because whereas Jesus was addressing a lighted entity which already existed, Winthrop was merely romanticizing the dream of a future America, but which he was already happy enough about, to dress in the figurative words of Jusus.
Said Winthrop: “we must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all 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”.
And in a rather pleasantly ironic twist of fate, Winthrop had gone to become the first Governor of the Colony of Massachusetts, where he was said to have had the words of the ‘city upon a hill’ metaphor chiseled in stone and donned on the ‘Boston Common’ as a memorial of the dream of the immigrants and as motivation for self governance.
In fact Governor Winthrop would be elected 12 times in a yearly election circle, majorly for his establishment of a ‘conservative aristocratic theocracy’ and for his articulation of individual liberty side by side with the enforcement of ‘civil order’, -a concept which they said had helped to form “the basis of the early American legal system”. It was too, a product of that dream.
The ‘city upon a hill’ metaphor would come to be variously used especially by former American Presidents, and particularly by John F Kennedy and Ronald Reagan who had not infrequently used it to inspire leadership, service and development in the American political space.
John Kennedy’s first usage of the ‘City upon a hill’ metaphor, ironically, would be some nearly 300 years after Winthrop, at the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1961, where he read a powerful speech admonishing state assembly lawmakers about leadership and governance across the three branches and the three tiers of government.
Said Kennedy on that occasion: “Today the eyes of 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 by men, aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities”.
Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, in his 1989 Farewell Speech titled ‘The Shining City Upon a Hill’, had uniquely embellished his usage of the metaphor with the anecdotal binoculars of a political seer who proudly said that he saw the vision of an America as:
“a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed and teaming (he said) with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity”.
And although Kennedy proudly spoke about a nation already sitting ‘upon the mountain top’, Reagan, some ….. later, had the humility to still speak about it as a ‘dream’ in making or as a piece of ‘work’ still in progress. The lesson being: you are never ever done with nation building. And maybe reason too, they say that democracy is a journey, not a destination.
MAY 29TH
This should be the dream of every patriotic Nigerian. Or if for Sunday reasons we had been in a nightmare, let’s all resolve from the 29th of May 2023, to dream a dream.
This should be our dream all, irrespective of tribe and tongue, religion or geography; this should be our dream irrespective of partisan leneage; irrespective of geopolitical differences and notwithstanding even our fiercely contending electoral interests which are before the courts.
It is time we all put our differences away, and maybe for the first time, in unison, began to envisage Nigeria as the ‘City upon a hill’ that God has always intended it to be! It is time we buried the hatchet and unite around the one mutually-beneficial objective of awakening this ‘sleeping giant’, Nigeria, so that it assumes its rightful place as the cynosure of all eyes.
Let May the 29th be the date that we make this solemn promise to ourselves and to our dear country, of unanimously breaking away from our rancorous past and forging a united future whereat, though tribe and tongue may differ, as we are wont to give lip service to, at least in brotherhood yet we should stand.
It is time we inspired ourselves, and claim the glory, as in the pontifical words of the Prince of Peace, Jesus, who affirms we are: “the light of the world”; and that being therefore “A city that is set upon a hill….. In the same way, (we must) let (our) light shine before others, so that they may see (our) good works”.
It is time we reminded ourselves, in the inspiring words of Kennedy, that after May the 29th:
“the eyes of people (will) truly (be) upon us”; and that like Kennedy had said of America some sixty years ago, “our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill -constructed and inhabited by men, aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities”.
We have to let go off the dragging past and move onto a beckoning, promising future. We have severally dreamt the dream of Reagan; it is thus time that we began to build for ourselves the reality of the dream of Reagan, about:
“a tall, proud (Nigeria) built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed and teaming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity”.
This should be the Nigeria of our dream after May 29.
EPILOGUE
But it is time also that we told ourselves the blunt truth, as in the words of John Winthrop, that after May 29th:
“The eyes of all people shall (not only) be upon us, (but) so that if we (ever) deal falsely with our God in this work (which) we have undertaken.., we shall (continue to) be made a story and a byword”.
