Why is Jonathan Edwards universally regarded as America’s greatest Protestant preacher?
Part of the reason, known to every school child, is that he preached America’s greatest sermon. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” has appeared in virtually every anthology of American literature for the past century, and often stands alone as the only sermon included in the text. Even the video-hardened youth of today blanche at the graphic language and exquisite imagery Edwards employed to vivify the horrors of hell. But their reaction pales in comparison to the dread it inspired in the hearts of Edwards’s contemporary listeners, adults and children alike. Add to that Edwards’s certainty that a significant portion of his hearers were, indeed, going to hell, and you have all the marks of the quintessential “fire and brimstone” sermon. But Edwards the preacher was about far more than fire and brimstone. Yes, hell was a real place in Edwards’s mind, and therefore worthy of continual warning to avoid it at all costs. But this was emphatically not the subject that preoccupied his thou
