Teaching Edwards

Part 1: Assigned Reading

Ask your students to have read and annotated Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God for class. You may want them to take home some of the Critical Questions we have provided.

Teacher Resources
Full text of Sinners with glossary and reading help
Critical Takehome Questions on Sinners, Option 1
Critical Takehome Questions on Sinners, Option 2
Teacher's text of Sinners Lite. [This is for use if your prep time is severely limited. We have highlighted the more essential passages in bold type. We do not recommend this unless you are in dire straits, as a completist student could show you up in class if he or she has read the whole sermon!]

Part 2: An Introduction to Jonathan Edwards

Before beginning your discussion of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, inform your students about the life and legacy of Jonathan Edwards so that they will be better prepared to understand both Edwards and Sinners within the context of American literature.

Teacher Resources
Full Biography of Jonathan Edwards
Timeline of the life of Jonathan Edwards
Edited Biography of Jonathan Edwards (can be used as a handout)

Part 3: Introducing Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

In order to further prepare your students for their discussion, give them a brief background on the sermon and its relation to Edwards' work and the sermons of his day.

Teacher Resources
An Introduction to Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
Structure and Delivery of a Puritan Sermon

Part 4: Discussing the Sermon

This discussion will probably take up the majority of your class time. In order to facilitate your discussion, we have suggest that you use one of the two sets of critical questions pertaining both to the literary strategies and the theological-philosophical aspects of Sinners. (These are the same sets of questions found above in Part 1.) The first set of these questions is accompanied by a teacher's guide to discussing these questions in class.

A large part of your discussion may focus on the vivid language that Edwards employs in order to connect with his audience and promote his message. To help you easily identify places where Edwards uses imagery, metaphor, allusion, similes, etc., we provide below a version of Sinners in which most such passages are highlighted in red text.

Teacher Resources
Critical Takehome Questions on Sinners, Option 1
Guide to In-Clas Discussion of Questions on Sinners, Option 1
Critical Takehome Questions on Sinners, Option 2
Sinners text with imagery highlighted in red

Part 5: Possible Assignments

a) Many American Literature teachers teach Edwards' sermon alongside Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have A Dream in a sermons unit. Whether or not you do, you might want to try having your students write their own sermons.

Teacher Resources
Teacher Rubric for Student Sermons
Structure and Delivery of a Puritan Sermon

b) You might want to get your students to deliver a section of Sinners in class the following day. Costumes would be required! This would be fun, and also chilling!

c) You might want to have your students imagine their way back into a Puritan's mind and reflect in writing on whether they think that their God would be angry. What do they think would be God's overwhelming emotion and why?