The Utopian Vision Through John Winthrop And Ralph Waldo Emerson's Eyes
If you asked someone to define their “Utopia” to you, it would vary from person to person. John Winthrop and Ralph Waldo Emerson both developed their idea of Utopia in different periods, causing both views to contradict themselves based on their beliefs. As a whole, both were able to provide strong views that - even though they contradicted one another - were able to finalize the Utopian vision handed to us today.
As the Massachusetts Bay colony sailed towards New England, John Winthrop had given a sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity,” in which he pictured the colonists in harmony with God and each other to become divinely ordained to build “a City upon a Hill”. The Puritans hoped coming to the Massachusetts Bay Colony would help them flee the Church of England which was corrupt at the time. They believed that authority shouldn’t come from priests or bishops but instead from God himself. As Winthrop stayed in New England he was able to keep and record his experiences in a journal, that was deemed valuable. As stated by Dunn and Yeandle: “No wonder that subsequent historians have deemed Winthrop's Journal essential reading: it offers what its author took as the quintessential distillation of God's will toward the New England experiment.”(Gura) To them, Winthrop was seen as a figure who was able to experience life in New England and able to share his understanding of the world about God.
The difference between the Pilgrims and the Puritans was that they believed that people shouldn’t be able to tell others what God wanted, but let God tell his people through the Bible. For Puritans, letting God become the center of their universe was what they believed was right through the Bible. As a whole community, they had to worship God or else they wouldn’t be saved in the end. In the article written by Kenneth S. Sacks, he states that “The current collection both enforces and enlarges the scope of that investigation, reflecting the breadth of the Transcendental religious experience, spanning most of the Nineteenth Century and extending beyond the United States.”. In his whole article, it helps depict the main idea and views people had on transcendentalism and the religious affiliation with it. Although as broad as it is deep, the collection touches on some of the complexity of religious and spiritual questions coming from a period of political and scientific change.
Transcendentalism was part of the romanticism movement that was practically led by Ralph Waldo Emerson with his idea of self-reliance and self-thinking. Emerson believed that we should be able to create our ideas and act on them without help. Both men ultimately had the same goal when it came to creating the utopian vision but the way they got there was different; while Emerson focused on refining each individual, Winthrop focused on the better of the community as a whole.
John Winthrop had made sure that fleeing England’s corrupt idea of a “church” was worth it. His view of “the city upon a hill” became the proper model of Puritanism to follow, and by following it, spread the word about their religion for others thereafter. As Robert Levine quotes Winthrop in The Norton Anthology: “The eyes of all people are upon us, so that 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 by-word through the world.” (Levine) In his own words, he proves that one of his biggest concerns with the Massachusetts Bay Colony was preserving a healthy relationship with God and worshipping him only. In his mind this made the colony seem like the holiest place beside God’s heaven.
Heaven was a complex topic when it came to the Puritans. In the Bible, the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, were placed in the Garden of Eden as perfect humans. God’s only rule for them was that they could eat whatever they wanted from the garden, except for a specific fruit because if they did their sin would follow them for the rest of humanity. Eve, unfortunately, was persuaded and had subsequentially hurt humanity. Puritans believed that this was where the idea of original depravity, meaning that everyone was born a sinner, had originated from making them more cautious of their actions. Eating the fruit helped connect how both disobeyed God and seem unholy to humans. They also believed that when God’s day came, not everyone would be saved because God already had a list of chosen ones who would and would not be saved. The only way they believed to escape from their fate was by behaving and worshipping God to the fullest. To practice their religion “correctly”, Winthrop mainly discussed the natural order of society and, how to make the perfect society. Winthrop even included in his work that a series of questions could be asked by the people of the colony. John Winthrop’s system for the Massachusetts Bay Colony kept everybody in the place. It gave people the mindset that everything was of God’s work and he is the reason why things happen the way they do. By worshiping in god, not only did they save themselves, but those around them for a better chance to be chosen to live and go to heaven.
