As World War II entered its final stage, the professor understood the United States to be in a battle between two civilizations. America and Nazi Germany each represented irreconcilable understandings, with both claiming an exceptionalism that deigned to speak for humanity. Hitler’s cankered vision was to be contrasted with Winthrop’s declaration in his 1630 lay sermon A Modell of Christian Charity, which claimed that we must “rejoice together, mourne together, labour and suffer together.” With the success of D-Day, Miller and others could already see that a coming conflict lay further to the east, so that Winthrop would soon have to figuratively challenge Stalin as he had Hitler. “Winthrop opened the story of America,” writes Abram C. Van Engen in his engaging new book City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism, describing that contemporary myth which holds that the Puritan “called on us to serve as a beacon of liberty, chosen by God to spread the benefits of self-government, toleration, and free enterprise to the entire watching world.” In that fight, men like Miller were invaluable, for he and other scholars distilled an understanding of the United States’ history that none other than Stalin termed “American exceptionalism.” Much of the work that Miller did with the OSS, the administrative precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, remains classified. It’s known, however, that he helped establish its psychological warfare division.
“For we must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us,” Winthrop declared, possibly in Boston, possibly aboard the Arbella, possibly in England. Undoubtedly the most celebrated American line of the 17th century today, it was, however, as Van Engen makes clear, “a sermon and a statement that, for over three centuries, went entirely ignored.” When delivered, “few people heard it, no one recorded it, and everyone forgot it.” Furthermore, Winthrop’s sermon — if it even was a sermon — had nothing to do with American exceptionalism and everything to do with a call to Protestant holiness in the language of Matthew 5:14. There has been quite a shift during the last century, as Winthrop’s speech has been elevated to the genesis of American letters, the code that explicates the American spirit and defines the American covenant.