The United States Elevated to Glory and Honor

Stiles delivered Connecticut’s election sermon on May 8, 1783, at Hartford before Governor Trumbull and the state’s General Assembly.[1] Its scriptural foundation was Deuteronomy 26:19, a passage describing God’s promise to exalt Israel on the condition that it remain a “holy people.”[2]

Stiles connected this promise to the American situation. As summarized by Abiel Holmes, his argument linked national prosperity with true religion and the spread of virtue, ultimately making holiness the proper end of civil government.[5]

The published sermon ran to roughly 120 closely printed pages and was issued in New Haven by Thomas & Samuel Green in 1783.[3][1] Wiernik characterized it as a treatise on government extending from the Hebrew Theocracy to the contemporary United States.[1]

Holmes describes two main lines of argument. The first surveyed conditions Stiles considered important to political welfare: free tenure of land, population growth, suitable government, just laws, revenue, commerce, industry, reduced civil dissension, a regulated militia, vigilance against electoral corruption, and the cultivation of literature. Stiles maintained that these conditions already operated, or were likely to operate, in the United States.[5] The second line compared idolatry, deism, and Christianity, arguing that Christianity offered the greatest benefit to civil society and to the immortal destiny of individuals.[5]

Ezra Stiles served as president of Yale College from 1778 to 1795 and is also identified as a founder of Brown University.[6] As Yale president, he made Hebrew compulsory for freshmen.[7] He taught Hebrew and urged graduating students to recite Psalms in the original language, reportedly telling them this was “what St. Peter will expect of you at the Pearly Gates.”[6]

The intellectual roots of this commitment lay in part in his friendship with Rabbi Haim Isaac Carigal of Newport, Rhode Island. The two met at least 28 times before Carigal left Newport in September 1773. Their discussions included Hebrew, Arabic, Jewish mysticism, and the nature of the Messiah, and they continued corresponding until Carigal’s death in Barbados in 1777.[8]

Stiles also attended services at Newport’s synagogue and studied biblical and post-biblical Jewish materials, developing a close relationship with the community.[7] Alongside Samuel Langdon, president of Harvard, he was among the pastor-scholars who drew political lessons from biblical narratives when scripture was commonly invoked in discussions of governmental authority.[9]

A central feature of the sermon was its analogy between the United States and biblical Israel. Stiles called the new nation “God’s American Israel” and compared George Washington to an American Joshua raised up to lead a chosen people to liberty and independence.[1] Wiernik describes the sermon as tracing government from the Hebrew Theocracy to America, which Stiles presented as the culmination of popular government and the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.[1]

Daniel L. Dreisbach argues that Stiles interpreted Deuteronomy 26:19 as “allusively prophetic of the future prosperity and splendor of the United States.”[2] In this interpretation, liberty was the principal blessing on which the country’s anticipated strength and prosperity rested.[4]

The sermon also envisioned an “American Israel” capable of leading a worldwide moral reformation.[3] This language belonged to post-Revolutionary millennial expectations in which some preachers interpreted American military success as evidence of divine favor and assigned the new nation a special role in a perfected social order.[10] Related founding-era imagery portrayed Washington as a Moses-like leader who brought Americans from bondage into freedom.[2]

The sermon appeared amid post-Revolutionary expectations of a historical turning point, biblical searches for the “signs of the times,” and hopes for a perfected social order.[10] Stiles presented liberty not merely as a political achievement but as God’s principal blessing to the new nation and the foundation of its anticipated prosperity.[4]

His engagement with Jewish texts and Newport’s Jewish community provides important background to the sermon’s Israel-related language.[7][8] His Hebrew teaching at Yale, including his encouragement that students recite Psalms in their original language, similarly demonstrates the importance he assigned to Hebrew learning and scripture.[6][7]

The sermon was later republished in The Pulpit of the American Revolution, a collection of political sermons from the Revolutionary period. Its inclusion placed Stiles’s address among works selected to illustrate the era’s fusion of political argument and biblical interpretation.[11]

Stiles’s analogies between the United States and biblical Israel, and between Washington and Joshua, record his theological and political interpretation; they are not independently verifiable descriptions of divine election or national destiny.[2][1]

The broader historical importance of Hebraic ideas in American political thought remains debated. A Jewish Review of Books discussion distinguishes a strong thesis, in which the Hebrew Bible decisively shaped American institutions, from a weaker thesis in which biblical narratives primarily supplied metaphors and language for a new political order. It concludes that the magnitude of the influence is difficult to gauge, while affirming that pastors such as Stiles and Samuel Langdon did draw political lessons from biblical stories.[9]

The sermon’s title appears in differing forms in the consulted sources. Abiel Holmes’s biography gives “The United States elevated to Glory and Honour,” while the heading in The Pulpit of the American Revolution reads “The United States Exalted to Glory and Honor.” The versions differ in both the verb and the spelling of “honor.”[5][11]

Reference accounts also employ different terms for the sermon’s national analogy. Encyclopedia.com entries use both “American Israel” and “new Israel” when characterizing its providential and millennial vision.[3][10] Sources quoting Stiles more directly give the formulation “God’s American Israel.”[2][1]