This book provides a critical-historical analysis of the phrase 'city on a hill,' which was first used in a sermon by John Winthrop in the 1600s. Van Engen explores how this phrase has been used and reinterpreted over time, particularly in the context of American exceptionalism. The book spans American history from the 17th to the 21st century, examining the original social context of Winthrop's sermon, the absence of the phrase in American texts until the 20th century, and its impact on national narratives. It also delves into how historical societies, education, and historical writing have shaped the story of an exceptional New England and the conflation of Pilgrims with Puritans. The book highlights the malleability of history and the power of perceived origins in competing visions of the nation, engaging with current scholarly conversations about Indigenous histories and settler colonialism.
Why do we have countries? Why do we mark this land and these people as distinct from that land and those people? What are countries for? Yii-Jan Lin (Associate Professor of New Testament, Yale Divinity School) joins Matt Croasmun to discuss her new book, Immigration and Apocalypse, which traces the development of distinctly American ideas about the meaning of a country, its borders, and crossing those borders through immigration—exploring how the biblical book of Revelation has influenced our modern geopolitical map.
Together they discuss the eschatological vision of Christopher Columbus; the Puritanical founding of New Haven, Connecticut to be the New Jerusalem; Ronald Reagan’s America as “City on a Hill”; the politics of COVID; the experience of Asian American immigrants in the 19th century; and how scripture shapes the American imagination in surprising and sometimes troubling ways.
About Yii-Jan Lin
Yii-Jan Lin is Associate Professor of New Testament at Yale Divinity School. She specializes in immigration, textual criticism, the Revelation of John, critical race theory, and gender and sexuality. Her book *Immigration and Apocalypse: How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration* (Yale University Press 2024), focuses on the use of Revelation in political discourse surrounding American immigration—in conceptions of America as the New Jerusalem and of unwanted immigrants as the filthy, idolatrous horde outside the city walls.
Her book The Erotic Life of Manuscripts (Oxford 2016), examines how metaphors of race, family, evolution, and genetic inheritance have shaped the goals and assumptions of New Testament textual criticism from the eighteenth century to the present.
Professor Lin has been published in journals such as the Journal of Biblical Literature, Early Christianity, and TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism. She is co-chair of the Minoritized Criticism and Biblical Interpretation section of the Society of Biblical Literature, on the steering committee for the Ethnic Chinese Biblical Colloquium, and on the steering committees for the New Testament Textual Criticism and the Bible in America sections of SBL. She also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Biblical Literature. Professor Lin is a member of the Society of Asian Biblical Studies, the European Association of Biblical Studies, and an elected member of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas.
Show Notes
- Get your copy of *Immigration and Apocalypse: How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration, by* Yii-Jan Lin
- Illustration: “John of Patmos watches the descent of New Jerusalem from God in a 14th-century tapestry”—modified and collaged by Evan Rosa
- Christopher Columbus’s eschatological vision
- The Book of Revelation and the heavenly city
- The meaning of “apocalypse”
- New Haven as New Jerusalem
- John Davenport (April 9, 1597 – May 30, 1670) was an English Puritan clergyman and co-founder of the American colony of New Haven.
- Ronald Reagan and America as a “shining city on a hill”
- America as God’s city
- Revelation 21, The New Jerusalem
- “A door that’s always open”
- 1983 as the “Year of the Bible”
- Exclusion, open gates, and America’s immigration policy
- Hospitality
- Outside the gates
- “For some reason, the seer doesn't see just an open landscape. He sees these definite walls and definite gates, even though they're open.”
- The book of deeds and the book of life
- Bureaucracy, and entry and exclusion into heaven
- The Good Place
- What was immigration like in the Greco-Roman world?
- Citizenship lists, registrations, and ways of keeping people out
- “If Heaven Has a Gate, a Wall, and Extreme Vetting, Why Can't America?“
- Steve King's tweet in 2019, “Heaven Has a Wall, a Gate, and Strict Immigration Policy, Hell Has Open Borders.”
- Disease and exclusion (COVID-19)
- Disease came from colonizers
- “Disease as a divine act to clear the land”
- Chinese exclusion from America
- Mexican exclusion from America
- ICE was created to enforce laws explicitly excluding Chinese immigrants
- Film: An American Tail
- “The British Invasion”
- China, Enemy of the West, and the Dragon of Revelation 12
- Buddha and the dragon vs the whore of Babylon riding a beast
- “Do American political ideas about immigration start to frame American theological imaginations about the world to come?”
- God’s kingdom and “Empire”
- Fears that feed from theological to political registers
- “What should a Christian posture towards contemporary questions of immigration be?”
- Xenophobia and fear of the stranger
- Finality and satisfaction
- The theological error of identifying America with the New Jerusalem
Production Notes
- This podcast featured Yii-Jan Lin
- Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
- Hosted by Evan Rosa
- Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, Zoë Halaban, and Kacie Barrett
- A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
- Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give
For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture 
