KristyWes

Quoting

I was just reading this Boston Globe article about a recent discussion hosted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, where Senator John Kerry defended the place of religion in American political life. Honestly, I'm kind of bored by this topic of late, and leaning towards the camp that says Religion + Politics = Politics, but this paragraph caught my attention:

"Kerry traced his religious background to John Winthrop, an ancestor who first used the term "city on a hill" as an early Puritan settler of 17th-century New England."

I'm a little unclear by what they mean by "first used the term." I don't know about you, but I associate those words with Jesus, not John Winthrop. Plus, who knows who said it before Jesus? (How does one really know who first used a term anyways? What if I tell you I was the first person to use the phrase "like honey on a dog"? Would you believe me? If you did believe me, you'd be wrong. My mom was the first person to use that phrase. So there.)

Given sentence structure and punctuation, it's possible the author meant that "the first time John Winthrop used the term, he was an early Puritan settler of 17th-century New England." But that's not probable.

More likely, perhaps the author meant that John Winthrop "was the first person to use the term to apply to America being a 'city on a hill'." But that's not what the author wrote.

Anyways. Maybe I'm being unfair to the author. Maybe I'm extremely bored and don't have anything better to do than nitpick semantics. In any case, I plan to try to be more careful, going forward, to ensure that what I write is what I mean.