This diary will not be as substantive as I would like, but I couldn't find this referenced in any other diaries or stories and I wanted to get it out there.
Having stayed up way too late last night watching the debate and then noodling around online reading commentary from the "pundints" and bloggers, this morning I decided to fritter away a bit more time researching the origin of Palin's "shining city on a hill" quote to find out who originally said it.
[Short answer for all you history/trivia buffs out there: According to Wikipedia, John Winthrop first used "city upon a hill" in his sermon "A Model of Christian Charity," given in 1630 as he and his Puritan flock were on the ship Arbella shortly before they made landfall in the New World. Its first use by a politician appears to have been by President-Elect John F. Kennedy in a speech delivered to a "Joint Convention of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts" on January 9, 1961 (Kennedy credited Winthrop). President Ronald Regan added "shining" to the phrase in his January 11, 1989 farewell speech to the nation (Regan also credited Winthrop).]
Imagine my surprise, however, to learn that "city upon a hill" has a special meaning to the fundamentalist Christian movement. That's right folks, according to Wikipedia:
After the phrase was used by Ronald Reagan, the fundamentalist Christian movement in America took up the phrase "city upon a hill" as a sort of code word to describe their vision of bringing 'Christian Values' into government.
They've been slipping this one right by us:
The phrase was referenced several times during the 2008 Republican National Convention by Rudy Giuliani and several others, during the nomination of the Republican candidate John McCain.
Once you start looking (or perhaps more correctly know what to look for), there is a lot of information available about what this phrase means to the Christian right. For instance, these nuggets from endtimepilgrim.org:
[I]n a spiritual sense the Puritans, (and the Pilgrims as well), are still around. In fact today's Puritans continue to be a major driving force in American society. Nowadays they go by another name. We call them the 'Christian Right'.
The Puritan heart desire, mindset and motivation is not hard to understand. The dream and vision is for a just and godly nation. This same heart desire, idea and motivation has been seen repeatedly in American politics. The Puritan voices we hear in America today come from activists still voicing their concerns from church pulpits, Christian media, and the halls of government.
Many American Christians, particularly the evangelicals and fundamentalists, are very concerned about the moral decline in America today. They are vexed about the clear facts that the nation seems to be drifting into paganism and 'secular humanism'.
There is also a "Building That Shiny [sic] City On A Hill" list of "partiots [sic] [who] give and give to conservative Republican candidates and conservative grassroots lobbying campaigns that is available here:
There isn't much, if anything, we can do about this secret code phrase, but we should all know about it and be able to identify it and address it when we hear it.
After all, knowledge is power (and past is prologue).