Episode 54: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

We conclude our 2020 Halloween spectacular with the scariest one yet, Jonathan Edwards’s 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” That’s right, we read an EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SERMON voluntarily. If that’s not chilling enough, to wrap things up we take a very special journey to H-E-double hockey sticks ourselves.

We get into Calvinist theology, Enlightenment thought, demon babies, the First Great Awakening and Edwards’s status as a skinny legend—and the surprising location where you can read more about that last one. We also discuss his place among slave-owning shitheads.

For more on Edwards, check out Jonathan Edwards: A Life by George M. Marsden and Kenneth P. Minkema’s article “Jonathan Edwards on Slavery and the Slave Trade.” For more on Edwards and the logic and legacy of Hellfire sermons, see Gregory S. Jackson’s chapter “Hell’s Plot: The Hermeneutic of Fear” in The Word and Its Witness.

Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @betterreadpod, and email us nice things at [email protected]. Find Tristan on Twitter @tjschweiger, Katie @katiekrywo, and Megan @tuslersaurus.