In a recent article in the New York Times (Dec. 12, 2025), the columnist Thomas L. Friedman said this: “If you ask me what’s the most dangerous statistic in the world today [it’s]…the Gallup Poll that said fewer people than ever are going to church. Because… what you learned in Sunday school matters more than ever, starting with ‘Do unto others as you wish them to do unto you.’”
It’s true. We need our faith traditions now more than ever.
In the year 1630, John Winthrop, the Puritan governor of the newly established Massachusetts Bay Colony, declared that they had come to this continent to create a “city on the hill.” This was a reference to Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount: “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid.”
This itself was an allusion to a frequent theme of such Jewish prophets as Isaiah who said that God’s people must be “a light to the nations, that [God’s] salvation may reach to the end to the earth (Isaiah 49:6).”
For more than two centuries the United States was this city on the hill. It was a place of hope, a place of opportunities. It was a land that claimed equality for all (even if many were not actually treated equally). It was a land that honestly strove for justice and for the rule of law.
And as a result, people from around the world flocked to this land of light and hope. They came seeking religious freedom. They came seeking political freedom. They came seeking economic opportunities. Not all of them found what they were looking for, but they remained to stake their claim to them even so.
Now, there are those who want to turn off the lights of this city on the hill that is the United States of America. They want to end the rule of law and make it instead the rule of a few powerful individuals. They want to gather up some of those who have fled to these shores since 1630 and send them away.
They want to dismantle the agencies that have protected our health, our food, our farms, our needy, our veterans and our aged. Worst of all, they want to divide the people of this land and turn Americans against Americans.
They forget that we are all in this boat together. They want to saw the boat in half, forgetting that if they succeed, the only ones who win will be the sharks who are even now waiting for us in the water.
And yet, there is hope. As Thomas Friedman suggests, that hope is found in the many religious traditions that this country offers—all those, at least, that teach love for God and for others, all those that work to build community and promote togetherness, all those who help those in need and who welcome the stranger.
Do you want to help our nation become that city on the hill once again? If so, return to your faith tradition. Support what it teaches. Reach out to others across lines of division. Rediscover what our forebearers knew: democracy is a fragile gift. It must be honored and forged anew with every generation.
Find the right church, synagogue, mosque or temple and join with others who, like you, want to learn how to do just that. Let’s rekindle the light of our city on the hill. We need it more than ever.
Rev. Dr. Ernest Boyer is Priest in Charge, St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Gilroy, and an active member of the Interfaith Clergy Alliance of South County. He can be reached at bo**********@***il.com.
