In the last post of the series, we reflected on Aaron Renn’s article about the culture’s shift from positive to negative in its attitude toward the Judeo-Christian worldview.

In this post, we will examine the insights of Nathan Stone on the need for new symbols in order to create a context for followers of Christ to fight against the forces of evil that are currently mounting. As we will discover, symbols are essential for us to understand who we are, why we are here and how we are to live as a result.

According to Nathan Stone, the political philosophers, Willmoore Kendall and George W. Carey “define a symbol as a way a people understand themselves and their place in history.” In their 1975 book, The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition, they argued that “the preeminent American symbols, from the Mayflower Compact to the Constitution, have depicted a virtuous people, under God, deliberating together for the common good.”

John Winthrop, the Colonial Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, famously established one of the early and most powerful images of colonial America. As he prepared to lead the Puritan settlers in their voyage to the New World, he gave a sermon titled “A Model of Christian Charity” delivered on March 21, 1630. Winthrop took for his text Matthew 5:14 in which Jesus states, “a city on a hill cannot be hidden.” Winthrop said that this Puritan experiment of freedom would be, “as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.”

The Puritans had a covenant between themselves and God: “So that if we 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 byword through the world.” We need to hear this warning in our nation today!

This symbol of the “City on a Hill” was part of the founding vision of the country and would become part of America’s very identity. Presidents John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama all spoke of the City on a Hill in their speeches to remind Americans who they were.

In today’s hostile world, we need new symbols to help us understand who we are, the context in which we live, and what we are to do.

Nathan Stone argues that to replace the older Founders’ symbol of a City on a Hill, and to fight the modern and postmodern symbols of death and destruction, we need to recognize three new symbols:

1. The Wilderness in which we currently live
2. The Evil that resides in the wilderness
3. Christ the Warrior King—the God we worship

In the next post in this series, we will look at the reality of the wilderness in which we live.

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