Inequality and Love Theme Analysis

Inequality is everywhere. But for John Winthrop, lay preacher and governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, this unhappy fact is something to be embraced, not fixed. Rallying his group of early colonists to New England in the inspirational sermon “A Model of Christian Charity,” Winthrop argues that the infinite differences among people should be seen as evidence of God’s multifaceted power. These differences mean that people must depend upon each other rather than solely on themselves: rich depend upon poor, weak upon strong, and vice versa. Seen this way, rampant disparities in things like material wealth, physical ability, social rank, and opportunity—harsh realities for which Winthrop’s colonists were about to swap the comforts of England—are in fact part of God’s plan. In his sermon, Winthrop ultimately argues that this God-given disparity, and the interdependence it fosters among people, provides a platform for people to show one another brotherly love, which Winthrop suggests is the antidote to the hardships of life.

Winthrop sets out to comfort his auditors, who are on their way to an inhospitable new continent, by explaining that inequality is part of God’s plan and, thus, must be lived with in harmony. Winthrop lays out three reasons for inequality. First, inequality reflects the variety of God’s creation. If everyone were the same, that would not do justice to God’s power to create an infinite array of strengths and weaknesses. And because everyone is so different from one another, this allows God to “have many stewards” through which to share the Gospel and spread God’s gifts. Second, God has placed people in different stations of life so that the Gospel might reach them in different ways. Again, this calculated variation is a testament to God’s power. Winthrop expands at length on the third reason: God has imbued humans with differences of power and ability so that they may discover a happy dependence on each other, rather than a cloistered reliance on themselves alone. The communal bent of this conclusion prepares his audience for his thoughts on how a community ought to use mutual dependence to coexist peacefully.

Winthrop calls the ideal form of this dependence “brotherly affection,” and he explores it as an antidote to the inequalities of colonial life. Inequality, Winthrop explains, is what allows people to “have need of [each] other,” and this interdependence is what “knitt[s] [people] more nearly together in the bond of brotherly affection.” In other words, inequality forces individual people to depend on one another for support, binding people together like disparate strands of yarn knit together to form something bigger and stronger. Winthrop highlights how if they fail to treat one another with brotherly love, their colonial project will be a “shipwrake.” For God-given inequality to be fruitful, they must be “knitt together in this worke as one man,” like different body parts joining together to form one human being. Referencing the Book of Micah, Winthrop urges his listeners “to doe justly, to love mercy, [and] to walk humbly,” setting up his argument for how they can actually achieve a culture of brotherly love in practice. In these metaphors of yarn and the human body, Winthrop asserts that love will allow seemingly unjust levels of disparity to be used for good, rather than a source of conflict.

Winthrop discusses “mercy” (kindness) “liberallity” (generosity) and “justice” (civic laws) as practical forms of this mutual dependence. These terms essentially boil down to charity—a word he strangely does not use, given its placement in the title. Giving money to the less fortunate, helping one’s neighbors, not hoarding (or “lay[ing] upp”) wealth for oneself: these are material forms of brotherly love and are essential to a functioning society. Just as Winthrop has argued that social inequality is part of the natural order, he now argues that the compulsion toward mercy and liberality also naturally occurs. This compulsion must simply be understood in order to produce the society of brotherly love he so advocates.

The emotions that naturally give rise to mercy and liberality are “sympathy” and “sensibleness”: generally, a basic human sensitivity to the plight of others. Winthrop uses several tactics to show the way humans naturally work together. He translates a common Latin aphorism as “like will to like,” meaning that humans are instinctively sympathetic toward one another. And he uses symbols such as clockwork and the human body to illustrate the motives of love behind mercy and liberality. In the former image, the clock is able to strike the hour only when wound by the “first mover” of kinetic energy. In the latter, different organs and bones “mutually participate” as one seamless body when united by “a bond, or ligament.” Throughout the sermon, the clock’s “first mover” and the body’s “ligaments” represent the innate psychological connection from which all charitable action spring. Winthrop uses these images to advocate the basic psychological disposition for humans to congregate and help one another. By stressing the natural occurrence of these two poles of life—hardship and love—Winthrop argues that they are inseparable and that mankind’s naturally occurring fund of love must be used as a defense against the unavoidable miseries of life.

It is important to remember the circumstances behind Winthrop’s urging of brotherly love. His urging might have less to do with mere friendship than it seems, and more to do with ensuring the smooth “cohabitation and consorteshipp under a due forme of government both civill and ecclesiastical.” His group of colonists is about to abandon their lives in England, make an arduous voyage, and brave hostile conditions in a new land to set the first example of Puritan utopia. Winthrop reminds them that “we shall be as a citty upon a hill,” suggesting that the whole world will take note of its trial. So the stakes are high for this group: not just because of the world’s social pressures on them to succeed, but also, as Winthrop later details, because God’s displeasure hangs in the balance.