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Question 3

Winthrop began his sermon by saying God “disposed” mankind so “some must be rich, some poor…some high…others lowly and in submission,” and Bercot ties this to Calvinist “stations in life”; how does that assumption about God’s purposes compare with Jesus’ kingdom teaching on greatness, equality, and servanthood, and where do you see modern Christians still justifying hierarchy as “God’s design”?

Another way to ask: If some people being rich and powerful is seen as God’s plan, how does that fit with Jesus’ teaching about serving others and not chasing greatness? Where do you see Christians today calling social rank or inequality “God’s design”?

Direct Answer Bercot contrasts Winthrop’s hierarchy-as-providence view with what he calls Jesus’ kingdom teaching that Christians are equals; the Puritan assumption supported fixed social ranks, while kingdom life challenges that kind of class-based superiority.

Support from Transcript:

Winthrop taught “some must be rich, some poor…some high and eminent…others lowly and in submission,” and even that the poor should not “shake off their yolk.”
Bercot ties this to Calvinism: Puritans believed God “assigned people to different stations in life,” intending the “upper class to rule the others and to live more comfortably.”
He says this does not match “the egalitarian views expressed in the Declaration of Independence, nor in the kingdom teachings of Jesus Christ, of all of us being equals.”
He adds they could only say “all men were created equal” in a limited way—“except in a spiritual sense” of “totally depraved.”
He implies that celebrating Puritans as the source of the “American spirit” ignores this basic mismatch.

Discussion Follow-ups Where do Christians today appeal to “God’s design” to defend social or economic inequality, rather than challenging themselves to live out kingdom humility?

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