Blast From the Past: John Winthrop

Earlier this morning, in my post about Michael Gerson's article, I mentioned John Winthrop's "city on a hill" metaphor to which Ronald Reagan added the adjective "shining."

Of course, that city would not have been very "shining" for us Catholics if Winthrop had his way. Here, from 1629, he explains why so many of his fellow Puritans were prepared to set out for Massachusetts Bay:

So, the anti-Catholic, pro-Protestant biases of American culture are as old as American culture itself.