Christian CEOs who Shaped the Course of American History with Alan Crippen

In our ninth episode, Aaron Groen, private wealth advisor in Ronald Blue Trust’s Baltimore office, has an in-depth interview with Alan Crippen, former executive director of the Faith and Liberty Initiative, about one of America’s first Christian CEOs and some of history’s largest Christian donors who helped transform American society for the better through their businesses and faith-led generosity.

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Transcript

- [Announcer] Welcome to the Wisdom for Wealth For Life Podcast. Let's bridge the gap between your faith and your finances. At Ronald Blue Trust, we apply biblical wisdom and technical expertise to help you make wise financial decisions. Our goal is to help you leave a lasting legacy. In this podcast, you will hear inspiring stories, practical tips and encouragement from the Ronald Blue Trust family, with special guests along the way. Welcome to the Wisdom for Wealth For Life Podcast. The information in these podcasts is provided for general educational purposes only. It is not intended as specific individual advice. The clients' experience may not be representative of the experience of other clients and they are also not indicative of future performance or success. Opinions expressed may not be those of Ronald Blue Trust. In today's episode, we have Aaron Groen, Private Wealth Advisor in Ronald Blue Trust Baltimore office has an in-depth interview with Alan Crippen, former Executive Director of the Faith and Liberty Initiative about one of America's first Christian CEOs, some of history's largest Christian donors who helped transform America's society for the better through the businesses and faith-led generosity. Let's listen in now.

- [Aaron] Hi, I'm Aaron Groen. So thanks for listening and making the podcast part of your day. My guest today is Alan Crippen. Alan is the Executive Director of the Faith and Liberty Initiative and Chief of Exhibits at American Bible Society. And he's also the host of the Faith and Liberty Rediscovered Podcast, which we'll link to in the show notes. You know, I invited Alan to the podcast today because of an experience I had recently. Alan was instrumental in doing the research and background for the exhibits at the brand new Faith and Liberty Discovery Center, which is on Independence Mall in Philadelphia. And when I visited the Faith and Liberty Discovery Center recently, I noticed that there was this thread throughout their exhibit and throughout American history of Christians who were business owners who altered the course of history in America. And I thought, who better to talk about this than Alan Crippen who helped curate these people's stories for the Faith and Liberty Discovery Center? So Alan, thanks for joining me today.

- [Alan] Aaron, it's a delight to be with you, thank you.

- [Aaron] Yeah, well, I appreciate it. So Alan, today, I wanted to highlight just some of these historical figures that you tell the story of at the Faith and Liberty Discovery Center. These are businesspeople really and from the work you've done, I pulled out a couple. There's the Tappan brothers, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, who many of our listeners may not even know about. And then John Winthrop who is perhaps more well-known as the Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony and who also famously alluded to the effort to establish a colony in the New World as a city on the hill. But maybe before we delve into these stories, perhaps you could briefly tell us what is the Faith and Liberty Discovery Center, which is what really first inspired me to talk to you about these people?

- [Alan] Yeah, thank you for that opportunity. The Faith and Liberty Discovery Center is Philadelphia's newest educational and cultural attraction. We're headquartered right on Independence Mall in Old City Philadelphia. So if you look out the front door to the left, you'll see Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution was signed. And a little bit to the right of that, you'll see the pavilion that holds the Liberty Bell. And then spanning right, we're literally right across the street from the Visitors Center and continuing to span right, the Constitution Center. And then we're flanked by two wonderful institutions, Congregation Mikveh Israel, which is the oldest Hebrew congregation in continuous service. They call it the Synagogue of the American Revolution, dating 1740. And on the other side of the street is the National Museum for American Jewish History. So we feel quite privileged with our location. So what's the point? The point is we want to be an institution among these other wonderful institutions, and they're so many historical and cultural institutions in Philadelphia, but our mission is really to conserve the American story. And what we want to do in that conservation of the American story is hold up the Bible's central importance to that story. So what is faith and liberty? Our thesis is that faith guides liberty toward justice, that liberty detached from any sort of moral compass or guidance is a pretty unstable thing. It can go in all kinds of crazy directions. And if we were speaking King James, we might say licentiousness. So liberty needs order and the Founders, of course, knew this. They were wanting to establish a republic. And a republic in their view, in their interpretation of history, Roman republics and forward, that republican liberty can only be sustained by virtuous people. That's what they knew and believed. And so they were quite concerned about institutions and efforts to perpetuate virtue that was necessary for liberty in our free institutions. So knowing that, we want to... And in fact, American Bible Society was one of those institutions that happened to have been founded by American Founders who were convinced that the Bible is a source of virtue. So let's put the Bible in every home, hence, 205 years ago, our mother institution was established. But the culture's changed now. Lots of crazy things happening and that story is largely lost. So we're now at the place where we have to build a museum to tell the story. That's a pretty sad state of affairs. But it's a place that's open to people of all faiths or no faiths who want to come and experience and to discover. It's not done didactically. We want the visitors to discover the relationship of faith and liberty and the Bible's influential role in the lives of individuals in key personal and historical moments who have advanced liberty and reform. And so you're familiar with the institution. We have a gallery there called the Liberty Gallery that features 22 what we call changemakers who have been influential in some of the great American reform movements. And they've been influential in the great American reform movements because they took inspiration from the Bible about the nature of liberty and the nature of freedom and the nature of justice and wanted to do something about it. So the whole experience tells that story and it's a super high-tech immersive interactive experience. We are introducing a new technology called the lamp technology, which allows the visitor to interact with the exhibits, but also collect information of interest that they can access in a personal portal. You probably wouldn't expect a 205-year-old Bible society to do the museum like this, but it's really an amazing feat. It's an amazing center and I hope that all the listeners will be motivated to come.

- [Aaron] Yeah, well, I know from visiting it, I don't know, about a month ago and really enjoying both how you were telling stories, but in ways that engaged new technology, old stories and new technology. And really I wanna talk about a couple of those stories. People who realized that liberty needed to be tethered to virtue and who also their efforts and their character helped to promote justice. So let's talk about the Tappan brothers. I didn't know anything about them before going to this exhibit. So can you tell us a little bit about who these guys were, their background, when they lived, and what was their business?

- [Alan] Yeah, well when we think of famous brothers in American history, I mean, who are the names that come to mind? We might think about the Wright brothers invented the airplane. We might think of scion families, like the Kennedys, very influential family. More recently, at least in the political world, the Koch brothers, Koch Industries. One scholar has argued that the Tappan brothers have been far more influential in American history. They've been far greater transformative agents of a positive change than any other brothers in American history. They were highly successful Wall Street merchants born in New England, but eventually settling in the commercial capital at the time, which of course and still is New York. They've been described as philanthrocapitalists.

- [Aaron] I like that. I like that term. It's quite creative and I think it's very accurate. But they were active in the antebellum era. So they're early 19th-century American business figures who were quite innovative and successful in their business ventures. For instance, they are the founders of what would become Dun and Bradstreet. So that's one of their contributions to American economic history. And of course, they were very devout Christians. And so that's a brief intro. I'm happy to say more.

- [Aaron] So these brothers, they were merchants, they were businessmen, their Christian faith shaped how they did business, how they saw the world. What did that look like? What did the outworking of that? Obviously, they knew how to make a buck. Did they make their buck in a different sort of way relative to their times and the people that might have been also successful beside them? And how did they use both their influence and their business smarts to change the world? As this other person said, this scholar that you quoted, more influential than any other brothers in American history.

- It's a good question. They both had come to a Christian faith early in their lives, born in New England. They were influenced I guess by what we'd call an evangelical faith in that era. This is the time of what I guess is called the Second Great Awakening. So for instance, the British philanthropist and politician William Wilberforce, his writings were very influential in the early, early years of the Tappan brothers' lives. So they're exposed to this great British and world statesman who most of us know as the architect of the abolition of the slave trade. And an amazing heroic figure who labored to rid that evil from the face of the planet. So this is one of their heroes and of course they're reading him. And he advocated of course, an ardent piety, a patriotism, and a philanthropy. And I think his life inspired both the Tappan brothers early on. Now, they're certainly gifted businesspeople, which is not to say they didn't have business failures, they had plenty. But they would persevere. So they moved forward. Lewis' textile business, for instance, eventually became overextended and he went bankrupt. Then he joined his brother, Arthur, as a partner. Arthur was in the silk importing business. They have completely different personalities. Arthur is taciturn and he's an introvert and he's extremely frugal. His office didn't even have chairs for guests 'cause he didn't want guests to stay too long 'cause he had so much work to do.

- [Aaron] That is hilarious.

- [Alan] And Lewis, on the other hand, he's the extrovert, the sanguine, loves public interaction, public speaking. So really the giftedness of both is a good pairing and their partnership was very, very successful. So you'd ask, how does their business practices differ? Well, of course, because they're believers and they're wanting to integrate their faith with their business practices. They want their faith to inform business ethics. They're set apart. For instance, in those days, and maybe still today, the temptation of business is to charge extremely high prices and offer easy credit. They rejected that whole place. They didn't like debt, so they had low prices so that people could afford the product and not have to overextend themselves in debt. And they were very much opposed to unsavory business practices among competitors and just business in general. Hence their motivation to start what became Dun and Bradstreet. This is an institution for actually rating the honesty and reliability of both businesses and businessmen. So they're bringing a moral accountability to business practices and this is totally nongovernmental. It's a private firm. It's even a private for-profit firm that holds up a standard against knavery, just exploitation, I mean, extortion rather.

- [Aaron] Yeah, so these guys were they were interested in not just going with the current that whatever it was common business practice, but they were looking to say okay, if we're guided by scripture, if Christians ought to live in a way that reflects our identity in Christ, maybe our businesses should look different. And I find it interesting how they were so conflicted about the need to improve the world of business. They essentially started a credit bureau for businesses to say, hey, do you keep your word, are you someone who I can trust to keep up your side of a contract or a business agreement? So they were successful that they made a lot of money and they upheld their Christian principles. They were honest, they were trustworthy. But you also mentioned that they were heavily influenced by Wilberforce. What did that look like? Did that influence how they used the wealth that they had or how they used the influence that they had?

- [Alan] Yeah, well, of course because of their honesty and integrity in business practices and their just business acumen, their business is largely successful, particularly Arthur. I alluded to the fact that Lewis' first effort eventually faced bankruptcy. Sometimes these things happen. But Arthur's business in the silk industry and beyond was far more successful. So they made lots of money, they made it honestly, but they viewed money not as a possession, not as their possession at least, but as a stewardship. It's a kingdom possession. And I think, again, understanding something of the times, this is the great Age of Reform. So the Second Great Awakening was a massive spiritual movement that swept the United States and lives were being changed. I like to think that when we think of the great social reform movements, for instance, like the movement to abolish slavery in England and Wilberforce was involved with. And his two great objects were abolish the slave trade and reform manners or morals. That whole work was predicated upon a spiritual awakening that preceded that. So when we think of social reform at least in our Anglo-American history, the reform is often preceded by revival. So there was a great English revival. We know some of those characters, some preachers like George Whitefield and John Wesley and John Newton, a former slave trader. These great preachers furrowed the ground that allowed for a Wilberforce then to say because of this change of heart and change of viewpoint that these aspects of repentance and amendment of life, we now have an obligation to change the things around us. So reform becomes the effort. And that was the case for the Second Great Awakening. So people are converted. They want to address social malady, social problems. We can catalog what they are. We can talk about this high degree of illiteracy. In those days, 50% of American children didn't go to school, for instance. In those days, there was a high rates of alcoholism. There was of course the great evil of slavery. There was sex trafficking. That's not a modern problem, it was a problem then as well. There were public health concerns. People who were deaf, people who can't speak. There were orphans. There were just all kinds of social problems and maladies. And the Tappan brothers had a big heart. They had a big heart in addition to a keen business acumen. And so they devoted their resources, particularly Arthur's was the more wealthy of the two, and Lewis, his contribution is leadership and advocacy. So he's the public face. And he also had a great savvy for public relations. We can talk about that if you want to. So out of their work come all kinds of philanthropic endeavors. In addition to the typical religious philanthropic endeavors what we would consider church planting, missionary work, they were engines behind that. They were some of the original supporters of, for instance, my employer, the American Bible Society. Arthur was very much engaged in the American Bible Society and other Bible societies, so we wanna get the Scriptures distributed. So they were involved in an amazing array of things. Libraries, chapels, meeting houses. They were the founders of Oberlin College, which exists to this day. And Oberlin College was unique in that it mandated by its charter that its students be racially integrated. Imagine this before the Civil War, racially integrated and that women be admitted as students, so co-ed. Really, really radical and progressive and yet motivated by a faith that holds up the biblical ideal of human dignity. These are the kinds of things that the Tappan brothers put their money behind.

- [Aaron] So these guys, they had their fingers in everything.

- [Alan] They did.

- [Aaron] Really, would you say that... You talked about how this one other scholar talks about how they had this huge transformative effect in American history. Would you say that their efforts in the abolition movement are probably why someone might say that about them? Would that be one of their keystone philanthrocapitalist efforts?

- Yeah, they were the founders, particularly Arthur of the American Anti-Slavery Society. And this was William Lloyd Garrison's organization. It was the radical and I mean that in a... How do I mean that? In a very vocal, very militantly... This is such a travesty, it needs to be addressed and it needs to be addressed now. I think the Tappan brothers' money and leadership and support of William Lloyd Garrison fueled the urgency to address the horror of slavery. And so again, a number of the leaders we think of in that movement, be they William Lloyd Garrison himself or Angelina Grimke or Theodore Weld, some of these other spokesmen, Frederick Douglass, you can probably connect to their efforts to somewhere back to Tappan money. It's fueling these coordinated advocacy and literacy efforts to prick the nation's conscience about the horrors of slavery. So it's interesting, they did have a falling out with Garrison eventually. And it was when Garrison wanted to and attempted to abandon constitutional measures of change. So they were very much I guess on the radical side of wanting to immediately abolish slavery, but they wanted to do it within constitutional means. And Garrison and others were ready to abandon the United States Constitution to get abolition. So this split the abolitionist movement. And it's an important question that I think it has relevance to some of our issues today. But all of that is to say is they're very much engaged in that. And of course, I'm sure many of your listeners know the film Amistad.

- [Aaron] Yeah, yeah. This was a Steven Spielberg production way back when he started doing these very serious historical dramas. I'm trying to think of some of the others, like Schindler's List. But these were provocative films to hold up heroes in the face of evil. And Amistad, the film was in that genre. Anthony Hopkins is cast as John Quincy Adams. But if you watch that film, the Tappan brothers are in it. So the story of course is about a slave revolt on a Spanish slave ship and the captives take over the ship and they essentially kill a number of the crew. They're adrift off the coast of the United States. They're picked up by a United States naval vessel and they're taken into custody. And of course, this becomes an issue of, well, I guess the question, is if maritime law, is it US law? The legal system has to sort out 'cause this ship is a Spanish ship. Should it be returned to its owners, its Spanish owners with its cargo, which is human cargo? So Lewis Tappan saw the opportunity here for a media blitz. And he brought the Tappan brothers' money to the cause. So he's providing for the enslaved passengers' legal defense. While they're here, he's actually helping them learn English. So he's paying for tutors. Part of that English education was reading the Bible, so they're providing Bibles and all their other needs. And of course, their legal defense. And it's a high-profile case that makes its way all the way to the Supreme Court and the defense for the enslaved cargo, for the Africans from Mendi Africa, are defended by a former President of the United States, John Quincy Adams.

- [Aaron] Amazing.

- [Alan] So this high drama and the happy news is it has a satisfactory ending. They are liberated, they're sent back to be repatriated in their homeland in Africa. And there's a wonderful story about that. They even give John Quincy Adams the famous Mendi Bible as an expression of gratitude. And the Tappans, and particularly Lewis, deeply cared for the Mendi people. And when they went back, Tappan money followed them to establish a missionary station among the people in West Africa. So that's not all in the movie, but I think the movie's wonderful. It's just a great story, but shows again the influence of these Christianly motivated businessmen who viewed their wealth as not a possession, but as a stewardship to guide liberty toward justice.

- [Aaron] It's really amazing to think about how they were different, they had different gifts. So Lewis saw this opportunity to bring this travesty up on to the national discussion through this specific incident. And it wasn't just like, hey, I wanna bring awareness to this. I'm gonna bring awareness to this and I'm gonna be a Christian humanitarian. I'm going to pay for all of their legal defense and treat them like people. And also when we win, I'm gonna help bring the gospel to their community. That's amazing to me. Now, I would imagine, I wanna close with this question for you and I'm curious to get your thoughts on this. I would imagine that we look at them today and we just look at them with admiration and maybe awe, but perhaps not everyone in their era looked at them with admiration and awe. Did they pay a price for this?

- It's a great question. There's is a price for faithfulness. The Christian walk is one of following Jesus. And Jesus went down the Via Dolorosa and at the end of that was a cross and it's at Golgotha. And that was the case for the Tappans. They were vilified. I think it was Lewis' house that was vandalized. Their businesses were boycotted by enemies. And they paid a financial price. So these great philanthropists lost their empire toward the end because of their faithfulness, because of their courage. And that is often, more often than not the cost of discipleship. So it's not a prosperity gospel that they held to. There's a price to faithfulness and that's I think I'm glad you asked me 'cause that's an important point to think about.

- [Aaron] Yeah, it can be tempting to think about, well, if I follow the Bible, if I am faithful as a Christian, God is going to materially prosper my business. And that may happen, but the Tappan brothers were faithful and they were known as honest ethical businessmen and their business prospered as a result of that, but they also took it a step further and said, what does it mean to be good stewards of the wealth God's entrusted to us to address wrong, to address sin and oppression and injustice in their society? And there were a lot of entrenched forces that said, no, we don't want you to fix that problem because we're making a lot of money off that, that oppression of enslaved people. And I think there's a lesson for Christians today who own businesses to say, do we love God's word, God's ways and what he's called us to more than the wealth-producing capacity of our business? And the Tappan brothers clearly did. And so I'm glad that we can tell their story. Let's switch gears. I wanna look further back into American history now.

- [Alan] Okay. All the way back to before the founding, early 1600s. Who was John Winthrop?

- [Alan] Well, we are going back here. Can we call him an American Founder? I think so. He was a Puritan, I guess by training, a lawyer. We know him today for a sermon that he preached called, A Model of Christian Charity. Peter Gomes at Harvard University describes that sermon as the most influential sermon of the millennium. That's pretty high praise.

- [Aaron] Would you agree with that?

- [Alan] I don't know. But whether he's right or wrong, it's a pretty important sermon. It's certainly one, it's a question to explore. So Winthrop is from Suffolk County in England. He's a lawyer, call it a squire. We call them esquires now. A squire, he's a magistrate, he's a Puritan who is caught up in this great effort and movement to reform England, not just the Church of England, but to reform all of England, bring it into this continuity with and conformity to the principles of the Bible and the righteous reign of Jesus. This is these kingship visions are animating the Puritans. It's a really powerful engine, Puritanism, an engine of social and political reform that eventually ended up in a civil war and then in abolishing the monarchy for a short time. The King of England's head was cut off and a republic was established in England for a short time. These are the times in which Winthrop is living. He's trying to affect these reforms under the reign of King Charles I, who again eventually lost his head, but he becomes very frustrated that this is not gonna happen in England. And so he's still compelled by this vision, but he's gonna leave the mother country and go to the New World and to hopefully demonstrate on the fringe of the British empire what is possible. So he ends up coming to America.

- [Aaron] He comes to America and part of that is he wants to secure greater freedom of conscience or religious liberty. But it also was a business venture, right? He came as part of a business venture, right?

- [Alan] Yeah, I don't wanna diminish the importance of the religious liberty narrative here, but it's not just that. And I think the Puritans of course were persecuted in the Church of England. Puritan means they wanted to purify the Church of England, so there were ecclesiastical tensions, but not all Puritans left the Church of England. In fact, Winthrop didn't view his whole prodigy as leaving the Church of England, just reforming the Church of England. So I think the religious freedom narrative is more important for the Pilgrims than it is for the Puritans. Yes, there was some prosecution, persecution, and prosecution of Puritans in England. But it's more to worship God in the way that our conscience dictate. The Puritans have a pretty bad record of religious liberty. Right.

- [Alan] It's not Pennsylvania, it's not Rhode Island, but yes, they were seeking the freedom to worship God according to their conscience. And so that freedom narrative, it's there, it's important, I just wanna qualify it. I think of interest to your listeners is this, he was basically, I will call him a CEO. He was the chief executive officer of a company that was called The Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England. And when you read their literature, they talk about plantations. Now, when we hear plantations, we think of slavery and we think of these large agrarian tracks that are south of the Mason-Dixon and the antebellum world, et cetera. That's not what the Puritans mean by plantation. They're meaning they're planting a colony. It's a colony. And so what is a colony? A colony is a micro society and it's a micro society that has a certainly a religious dimension and it has an economic dimension and it has a political dimension. It has an arts and education dimension. It is an entire social vision, but the driving factor is that this is a for-profit enterprise that he's the CEO, he's not a minister. He preaches what Peter Gomes says is the most influential sermon in the millennium, but he's not a preacher. He's a lawyer and a CEO. And he's the head of a business venture, a stock venture company with an IPO. I don't know if that's literally true, but you get the point. They're investors in this, they're dispatching and the new model was there were these ventures before, but the CEO stayed back in the mother country. Well, now, that wasn't working. We need to put the CEO on the ground. And so we know Winthrop. You introduced him as a political governor and he was. And that's how we really know him, but with that political governorship came chief executive officer of the company. It was the engine for all this. So he leads a fleet of settlers, 1,000 colonists to land in Salem, Massachusetts, which is now a suburb of Boston. Four ships, the Arabella, the Talbot, the Ambrose, and the Jewel, 1,000 passengers to plant a colony, to plant a society, to plant an economy, to plant a church for sure, to plant a political community. All of the above.

- [Aaron] He's an entrepreneur on so many levels because he's saying, I'm gonna start essentially a new state. I'm going to just start, I'm gonna plant a church, I'm going to create all of the cultural relics of a state, establish them and I'm also going to run a profitable business that's overlaid on all of this stuff. All these other things are needed, they provide stability and structure and guide rails, but this business is really what's the driving force behind all of that. So he's famous for this sermon, which is interesting. He's a layperson really. He's famous for this sermon as a layperson. The sermon that he delivered en route on a boat before they left, I guess it's not really clear.

- [Alan] Yeah, we're not really sure when and where. We think it was on the boat, but you know...

- [Aaron] And it's influential. You could even argue famous because of some of the expressions from it. I read the sermon before our conversation. I figured, okay, I should probably know what exactly he said. And I was struck by the fact that the sermon came across to me as a blueprint of what should our new business venture look like or what should our new government, or as you called it society, look like? That was really interesting to me. You could blueprint or if we wanna be a little more crass, a pep talk for the people who were going with him, these Puritans. So tell me, why was this sermon so important and what was in there that was so unique?

- [Alan] Yeah, the title of the sermon is called, A Model of Christian Charity. And of course, charity is the King James Bible word for love. So really he's holding up a model of Christian love. I think I wanna hone in on that word model. You were touching on this. The sermon, and maybe this is why Peter Gomes thinks it's the most influential sermon of the millennium is it's casting a social vision for the possible. And in fact, that social vision became reality. I mean, it eventually flourished. It's one of those seminal sermons that has contained within it the DNA of what would become the United States of America. And yet it's the model of Christian charity, he's saying we need to build a society based on love. What does love of God and love of neighbor look like, what Jesus called as the two great commandments. That's what's at the heart of this sermon. And if you unpack those theological points with the great commandments, love God, love your neighbor as yourself, then there are implications. There are implications for all of society, there are implications certainly for religious institutions. There are implications for economic institutions. There are implications for political institutions. And the Puritans, this is the beginning of the Great Migration of the Puritan. My ancestors for instance came over with these great migrations. They're frustrated by the lack of reform in England, that they can't get the appropriate social reforms in place, so we're gonna go to the fringe of the empire with legitimate charters from the government to actually model something different, something that's successful. And this is the animus, not animus, the animation for a number of colonial experiments. But Massachusetts Bay is one of the early ones and it's incredibly successful.

- [Aaron] So this sermon, it sets the stage. It's really interesting to me to think about it's difficult I think for maybe a modern reader of the sermon to wrap their minds around it because we've had some of the expressions. His most famous expression in the sermon where he talks about this effort to establish a city on a hill and he says, "Because the eyes of the world will be on us."

- [Alan] That's right.

- [Aaron] To me, if I was listening to him, I think I would've thought this guy's crazy. The eyes of the world don't even know we're unleashed. It's four ships going to this new world. Are the eyes... But it seems like there was a real... Winthrop had a real sense of the historical moment that they were in, I think.

- [Alan] He did.

- [Aaron] Because an ordinary person may not have said, the eyes of the world are upon us. We must create this city on the hill which reflects God's divine mandate for how we ought to live in community with one another. I think that's amazing to think that here is a man in mid to early 1600s leading 1,000 people, that's a lot of people, but he didn't know that the United States of America would one day grow and flourish on this same soil. So how do you think the modern listener should look at his sermon, the modern reader should look at his sermon and think about it when we have presidents who love to talk about America being a city on a hill? Do we get it, do you think? Do we get his original meaning?

- [Alan] I think it's always helpful to go back to the sources, do what you did. You read the sermon and put it into context. Clearly, Winthrop is a visionary. I mean, he has a sense and however humble, four ships, 1,000 people. And I wanna say that's not an insignificant undertaking. I mean, that's a fairly substantial "plantation" effort.

- [Aaron] I wouldn't want to be responsible for 1,000 people.

- [Alan] Yeah, heading into the wilds of North America. So he's clearly a man of vision and there's a support network behind. For instance, before they left, there was a worship service at the Anglican Church of the Holy Rood, the Anglican Church of the Holy Rood where the Reverend John Cotton, another great Puritan preacher, delivered a sermon entitled, God's Promise to His Plantation. And again to this planting, planting of a society. So he's bolstering the morale of these 1,000 people. He's also casting a vision that this is the call of God, we're hopeful those of us who are staying behind that you can actually make this happen. And so it's not like everybody's leaving. It's the 1,000 who are leaving to demonstrate to the watching world that these reforms that have been advocated in England are actually possible. So we're going to go to New England to demonstrate to Old England how that they can be actualized or brought to life. And so again as you said somewhere, whether it was onboard the ship, on the way over, after they got there, that Winthrop offers his sermon, A Model of Christian Charity. And I think I have one quote here that I'll read from the sermon, and this is early in the sermon. He said, "Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck," So he's already talked about the potential of failure, the potential of failure, so they knew. This was a group that is taking risks, great risks, very conscious of that risk. They're on ships and he's talking about shipwreck. That's a word picture and an image that is very real. I mean, it seems abstract to us sitting in studios today we're not on a ship, we're not undergoing the barrels of the sea in a small wooden-hulled craft for a month and a half or two months or however long it took to cross the Atlantic Ocean. So he writes now the only way to avoid the shipwreck and to provide for our posterity, and here's a consciousness of the future, so this is the visionary in him is to follow what, the counsel of Micah to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God. That was one of George Washington's favorite book verses, by the way. So he again cast this vision of a just society, of a harmonious society, of a society that has care for one another. And that's really on in the sermon. And he closes the sermon with that same passage you quoted. "That we are entered into a covenant with him "for this work," this binding agreement with him, him being God, "for we must consider that we shall be like a city "upon a hill for the eyes of all people are upon us." Of course, that's an appropriation of Matthew chapter 5. So bold, visionary, humble knowing that a ship work, a shipwreck rather is quite possible. This is the inspiration for the passengers on that fleet which the Arabella is the flagship. And as you have alluded, this particular phrase has been quoted by many a president, starting with John F. Kennedy before the Massachusetts General Corridor, the state legislature of Massachusetts. He was president-elect and he's referencing his administration, his future administration that's about to be inaugurated. And he says he takes his inspiration from John Winthrop and he quotes this sermon. It's a very beautiful speech. Famously and perhaps more famously, or at least more recently, Ronald Reagan referenced Winthrop time and time and time again. I think his first public reference to it was in 1974 when he was governor. And then that image is beautifully captured in his farewell address to the nation as he was leaving office, but the city on the hill is in his speeches throughout. And then even more recently, Barack Obama. So this is a sermon that has captured the political imagination of Americans, including presidents and it's a trans political message. It's a message that transcends partisan politics because it holds up a vision for America as it ought to be, one characterized by love of God and love of neighbor.

- [Aaron] Yeah, and here it is a sermon written by a businessman, a CEO. And I think there's something that business owners who are Christians can take away from this because Winthrop was concerned, you could say obsessed that their efforts would be a city on a hill. He was referencing the sermon on the mount when Jesus says, "Let your light shine before men." And so what Winthrop is saying, the eyes of the world are upon us, meaning they know that our endeavor, our business venture in the New World is driven by our faith. And if we fail and particularly if we fail, how we fail or how we succeed is of great importance. If we succeed in the wrong way or fail in the wrong way, we'll have failed in our testimony. But if we succeed or fail in the right way, in a way that honors God, we will have ultimately succeeded whether the effort is a failure. And I think that businesspeople who own businesses, who guide businesses, who lead businesses would do well to reflect on that to say that are you creating a city on the hill, is your light shining in your business, and are you acknowledging that the eyes of the world are upon your business? Just like we think of the eyes of the world are upon America as its beacon of light. Do you think that's a fair takeaway, Alan?

- [Alan] I do, absolutely.

- [Aaron] Well, any other thoughts on this sermon before we wrap it up?

- [Alan] Well, my thought is this, listeners should read it. It's I think modern English versions of it, it's not that long, it's rich with biblical content. And at American Bible Society, we're all about biblical content. So I think always going to the sources to recall where we've come from and what it means is a good thing. So I hope we've provoked the curiosity and imaginations of the listeners today with some good stories that are worth exploring further.

- [Aaron] Yeah, and we'll definitely link to that sermon 'cause I agree. It's not only biblical and theological, I found it very practical.

- [Alan] Very much so.

- [Aaron] He finds ways to apply biblical truth to how this new society ought to function, how they ought to do business, how they ought to care for one another. So anyway, I don't wanna do not too many spoilers. So Alan, thanks for joining us for this on-purpose conversation. I wanna encourage our listeners, if you are in Philly, check out the Faith and Liberty Discovery Center. It's a great use of your time. You'll learn more about these stories and so many others that they're telling about people who shaped the course of American history through their faith. So again, Alan, thanks so much.

- [Alan] Thank you, Aaron, pleasure.

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