Thursday, September 23, 2010
Lansing, MI

Dr. Richard Gamble, Hillsdale College
will be speaking on the following occasions:

12:40-2:30 PM  in 222 Erickson Hall
Michigan State University Campus
Dr. Gamble will discuss his book The War For Righteousness

2:40-4:00 PM in 326 Natural Science Bldg
Michigan State University Campus
Dr. Gamble will discuss the longer history of
"America's identity as the city on a hill"

7:00 PM at Liberty Christian Church
Lansing, MI
Dr. Gamble will lecture on "Ronald Reagan's Vision of
America as the City on a Hill"

America's identity as the "city on a hill" has become indelibly associated in the public mind with the presidency of Ronald Reagan.  The phrase comes from the Gospel of Matthew, was picked up by the Puritan leader John Winthrop, and then applied to the United States in 1961 by president-elect John Kennedy.  But Reagan did more than any other modern figure to transform the image of the city from a metaphor for the Church to a myth about the United States.  The story of how, in the words of Senator John Danforth, the "Winthrop message" became the "Reagan message" illuminates a larger story about American exceptionalism, about the boundary between Church and State in America, and about the implications of the American civil religion for Christians.

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Richard M. Gamble is Anna Margaret Ross Alexander Professor of History and Political Science and Associate Professor of History at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan.  Before coming to Hillsdale in 2006, Dr. Gamble taught for twelve years in the history and honors programs at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Florida.  In 2003 and 2010, he was a Visiting Scholar at St. Edmund's College, Cambridge University.  He is the author of The War for Righteousness: The Progressive Clergy, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation (ISI Books, 2003), author of a chapter on World War I for the forthcoming Cambridge History of Religions in America, and editor of The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human Being (ISI Books, 2008).  He specializes in the history of the American civil religion and is currently writing a book on how America became the "city on a hill."  His essays and reviews have appeared in The American Conservative, Orbis, Humanitas, The Journal of Southern History, Modern Age, The Intercollegiate Review, and The Independent Review.  He serves as a contributing editor for The American Conservative and Humanitas and on the board of trustees of The Philadelphia Society and The Academy of Philosophy and Letters.  He is also a Ruling Elder at Hillsdale Orthodox Presbyterian Church.