What can a breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth?

For the Colson Center, I'm John Ston Street.

To celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States and the signing of the Declaration of Independence,

Kena Academy has taken up the task of telling the American story.

Among the resources they offer to schools, especially classical

schools, is a new History 250 series of free, beautifully made short films that are released weekly

and tell the story from America's founding to the present. According to their website,

Kane Academy's approach to history is, and I quote, observational and sympathetic, not anachronistic

or moralistic, narrative and fully contextual, not fragmentary, unitive, not divisive, end quote.

A film in the series titled A City Founded Upon a Hill tells the story of Puritan John Winthrop

in the founding of the Massachusetts Bay

colony in 1630. That event took place 150 years prior to the Declaration, but is essential

to America's formation and its future. Prior to making landfall in the new world, Winthrop wrote

and delivered a famous sermon, a model of Christian charity.

Inspired by Jesus' words in the sermon on the Mount, Winthrop made this famous statement,

quote, we're entered into covenant with God for this work, for we must consider that we shall be a

city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, 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. His words were both daring and humble. Having landed on a massive,

largely unknown continent, with slim prospects of survival,

much less success, there was no hint of arrogance or invincibility. Instead, Winthrop offered a pious

warning to the Puritans to keep covenant with God, lest they become a blot on the pages of world

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