In this lecture, I'll be exploring the roots of Puritan theology in the Protestant Reformation, and the exciting new possibilities, tensions, and problems that this revolutionary theology created for early English settlers in American in the seventeenth century. I'll focus on the speech of John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, to a group of 700 colonists on the importance of modeling Christian charity not only for their own survival, but also to prove the viability of their religious practices before the eyes of the world. This is also known as Winthrop's famous "City Upon a Hill" speech, which later became a byword for the Cold War notion of American Exceptionalism, or the idea that America represents a "chosen people" responsible for modeling virtue to the rest of the world (and thus subject to certain privileges and responsibilities). What connections do you see between Winthrop's speech and our own society? What ideals do you think have survived in American culture from these Puritan beginnings?