Collage Story Box: "A City on a Hill" by John Kohan

November 3, 2024

Collage Story Box: "A City on a Hill" by John Kohan

The Puritans came to the New World  to found what their leader, John Winthrop, using the words of Jesus, called “A City on a Hill,” a model society for all to follow based on Christian values. In my fourth collage story box, we fast forward to the modern era to see how this faith-based example of right-living (viewed with skepticism from the beginning by displaced indigenous peoples!) evolved over time into a gated community for privileged White Protestant men with their showy estates and golf courses, Wall Street board seats, and exclusionary churches. Cries for justice from those locked out echo through the valley below. While immigrants are kept in cages, and conservative Supreme Court justices serve as "doormen," American Jews decry all too frequent hate crimes, Native Americans face down Federal agents on their land, women fight for control over their lives and bodies, the LGBTQ community presses for equal rights, Latino migrant workers follow the path of iconic union organizer, Cesar Chavez, and African Americans proclaim Black lives matter, too. The call grows ever louder for the gates of the City on a Hill to be thrown open, so, in the words of the old revivalist hymn: “whosoever will may come.” (John Kohan)