Jonathan Edwards,
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
September 10, 2010
AMERICAN LITERATURE: 1700-1820
The changing face of America
 Population of the colonies increases exponentially




1670: 111,000
1700: 250,00
1760: 1.6 million
1700-1720: Boston doubles in size.
 Immigration

~1700-~1750: An influx of Dutch, Germans, French Protestants, and
Jewish merchants.
 Compared to Europe, the colonies were cheaper and healthier places to
live.
 Slavery begins to quicken its pace.
 Many Native American Indian tribes begin to disappear.
AMERICAN LITERATURE: 1700-1820
The Enlightenment in America
 Cotton Mather’s death in 1728 symbolically marks the end of Puritanism as the
first colonists knew it.
 Isaac Newton (1642-1727) revealed through the laws of physics some basic
concepts of the universe, proving that the human mind, without the aid of
God, can understand the universe in new ways.
 John Locke (1632-1704) postulated that human sympathy, rather than
supernatural grace, could serve as the basis for a moral life: reliance on human
sympathy could be the catalyst for moral choice and individuals could control
their own spiritual destinies.
 The Enlightenment was a reaction against the authority and irrationality
established churches. William Bradford’s and John Winthrop’s allegorical
reading of the world (seeing every natural and human event as a message from
God) seemed outdated, quaint. More and more, Christianity was depicted as a
tool of tyrants and oppressors, and it was seen as hostile to the development of
reason and the progress of science and incapable of verification.
THE EMERGENCE OF AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM:
THE GREAT AWAKENING
 The first generation of New England Puritans required that
church members undergo a conversion experience that
they could describe publicly. Their successors were not as
successful in reaping harvests of redeemed souls.
 Beginning in the 1730s, mass open-air revivals overseen by
powerful preachers like George Whitefield brought
thousands of souls to the new birth, called The Great
Awakening.
 While this movement had spent its force in New England
by the late 1740s, these ministers carried the Great
Awakening into the southern colonies, igniting a series of
the revivals that lasted well into the nineteenth century.
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1717)
 The most important American preacher during the Great Awakening.
 Ironically, Edwards credits John Locke for confirming his conviction that
believers must not only comprehend religious ideas, but also that they must be
moved by them: “The difference is like the difference between reading the word
fire and actually being burned.”
 A revival in his church in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1734 was considered
a harbinger of the Great Awakening
 Edwards was more than an effective evangelical preacher, however. He was the
principal intellectual interpreter of, and apologist for, the Great Awakening. He
wrote analytical descriptions of the revival, placing it in a larger theological
context. Edwards was a world-class theologian, writing some of the most
original and important treatises ever produced by an American.
 He died of smallpox in 1758, shortly after becoming president of Princeton.
Jonathan Edwards, con’t.
 Perhaps Jonathan Edward's only writing familiar to
most modern audiences, Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God was not representative of his vast
theological output, which contains some of the most
learned and profound religious works ever written by
an American. Like most evangelical preachers during
the Great Awakening, Edwards employed the fear of
divine punishment to bring his audiences to
repentance. However, it is a distortion of his and his
colleagues' messages and characters to dismiss them as
mere "hellfire" preachers.
 Don’t forget this: Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin
were contemporaries. The colonists in New England were,
at Jonathan Edwards’s time, 120 years removed from the
Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth Rock. These 120 years had
dulled the horror and pain of the Pilgrims’ destitute handto-mouth existence, and all that remained was a picture of
a lost golden age where simple family values and an
unquestioning faith in God allowed the pilgrims to succeed
(Clearly, no one was reading Bradford’s “Of Plymouth
Plantation” or they would have heeded his warnings).
 What was stirring, striking, or memorable to you in
reading this sermon?
 What does it mean to be unconverted?
 What images or analogies does Edwards use to evoke the
situation of the unconverted?
 What are the most prominent themes communicated by
these images?
 What is the purpose of his sermon?
 How are listeners meant to feel?
 How are people meant to respond to his sermon?
Rhetorically Speaking
 Edwards takes a verse from Deuteronomy as the basis
for this sermon: “Their foot shall slide in due time”
(32.35). He then interprets it as “There is nothing that
keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell but
the mere pleasure of God.” How would you
characterize God in Edwards’s sermon?
 How does this sermon work? What makes it effective?
 1. How does his use of language in the "Application"
section of the sermon differ from and comment on the
earlier “doctrinal” section?
 2. Jonathan Edwards is considered the last great
Puritan because of his efforts to revive a dying
theology. Discuss the important arguments contained
in “Sinners.”
 3. How does “Sinners” compare in form and function
to Edward Taylor's poems?
Works Cited
 Religion in 18th Century America
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel02.html
 The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 7th ed.