How to Proclaim Your Religion-Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Religion should not be forced upon a group of people or an individual. Instilling fear or guilt is a false direction to bring somebody into a religion. Instead of personal beliefs and interest, the person is instead driven by selfish ambition.

Jonathan Edwards’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God uses persuasive strategies that forces terror and shame upon the listener. He uses this to draw listeners into his religion through negative emotion and manipulation. He focuses his piece mainly on the negative consequences of not joining his views, rather than the positive consequences of joining. The fact that some of his listeners considered suicide after his sermon shows that he targets the wrong emotional appeal in his audience. This radical behavior is deceitful and controlling. His perspective creates God as punishing and hateful; this diverges from respect through a relationship between the listener and God. Instead, it is a respect that comes from a fear of the listener’s own life.

This mind is commonly found in society today: groups of people standing with signs of “Repent or Die!” on the streets or the infamous Westboro Baptist church’s offensive picketing. These groups and their activities are generally frowned upon and rarely achieve anything except profound hatred from those around them. People these days are more independently-minded, unlike Edwards’s time. Puritans began questioning the rules of their faith and Edwards took advantage of this and their confusion. Although Edwards had good writing, he used it in a poor moraled fashion to support his cause.