Soul of a Nation/ of God and Caesar

This assignment is directly related to the God in America documentary “The Soul of a Nation.” After viewing the documentary: One page in length.

Analyze the moral vocabulary of Martin Luther King Jr. and the way he uses words such as freedom, righteousness, justice, and community. What meaning does he give them? What religious reasoning does he employ? How is his language different from the political discourse of the time?

Final Exam: This needs to be 1,000.
From the last documentary in the series: Ronald Reagan famously spoke of America as “a shining city on a hill,” recalling and embellishing John Winthrop’s (Links to an external site.) description of the “city upon a hill” he and his fellow Puritans intended to found. The phrase “city on a hill” is from the New Testament. Why do you think Reagan invoked a biblical allusion made by Winthrop in 1630? Does America still understand itself this way? Should it? What do you think Winthrop and Reagan each meant by this phrase? What does it mean in the 21st century for America to be a “city on a hill”? Randall Balmer (Links to an external site.) says Americans “have a sense that America occupies a unique niche in the divine economy. I don’t see that abating any time soon.” Do you agree?

Submit your response, written in college-level English, to the Turnitin dropbox. If you would like this assignment to also substitute for your final exam, you’ll need to write 1000 words. If not, a simple page response will suffice.

P.S. Please understand the phrase “divine economy” doesn’t reference markets, spreadsheets, balance statements; this is not about Wall Street. This is a religious term that really means “God’s plan.”