Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
Image 3.2 | Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God
Author | Jonathan Edwards
Source | Wikimedia Commons
License | Public Domain
Puritan faith in America thus gave way to
more liberal and diering denominations
and even deism. Edwards himself tried to
tamp down these shifts with such works as A
Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work
of God (1737), a work seeking to balance
emotionalism and mindfulness, and his A
Treatise Concerning Religious Aections
(1746), a work that distinguished genuine
from false religious experiences.
In 1741, Edwards gave the sermon
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, a
sermon emphasizing human depravity and
God’s unfathomable mercy. It uses natural
and observable details and terrifying images
to give a compelling depiction of that yawning
hell burning beneath all, particularly the
unwary and unready. Its depiction of
punishment almost, but ultimately does
not, overwhelm the sermon’s purpose: the
promise of God’s mercy.
Edwards exhorted a return to traditional
Puritan orthodoxy, claiming authority to
denounce “backsliders” in his congregation
and refuse communion to those sanctioned
by the Half-Way Covenant, that is, the
members of his church who did not publicly declare themselves as saved. In 1750,
his congregation rejected Edwards by vote and dismissed him from the church.
He then served as missionary to the Housatonnuck Indians in Stockbridge. In
1758, he became president of the College of New Jersey, now known as Princeton.
He died from smallpox after receiving an inoculation against this infectious disease.
3.3.1 “Personal Narrative”
(1765)
http://edwards.yale.edu/archive?pathaHR0cDovL2Vkd2FyHMueWFsS5l
HUvY2dpLWJpbi9uXdwaGlsby9nXRvYmplY3QucGw/Yy4xNTo3NDo1Lnd
qZW8
3.3.2 Reading and Review Questions
1. How does Edwards convey his sense of himself as being unique, as
uniquely religious, both before and after his “awakening?”
Page | 298