The Great Awakening was a religious revival in the 1730s and 1740s. It was particularly influential in the New England colonies, and sparked renewed religious activity in America. Many preachers were involved, including George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards, who preached the famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God " (1741). Through Jonathan Edwards's sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Edwards offers a very harsh interpretation to humankind. Meanwhile through a man named George Whitefield, Anglicization was expanding beyond the magnitude Jonathan Edwards could ever truly ascertain. Harry S. Stout, in his writing "American Awakener " depicts an upcoming public figure in Anglicization, George Whitefield as using "new techniques of promotion and publicity as it did a reawakened religious sentiments among colonial men and women. " (pg 90).
Jonathan Edwards engages many methods in his sermon to induce the people in the congregation that they are completely dependent on God, and they must devote their lives to him. By doing so, Jonathan needs the congregation to believe in him with their heart and soul, therefore, being aware of his audience and the setting, Edwards's uses ethos and pathos to convince the Puritan congregation to obey and believe in God. Edwards conveys frightening images throughout his sermon to induce his congregation into believing they are vulnerable to God's wrath. He continuously uses images of pain and eternal damnation, such as going into detail about what Hell is like and what kind of tortures await sinners, in order to frighten those present into leaving their old ways and converting. In his sermon Jonathan wanted them to know why God was so angry, God's hate of sinners the wrath of God and what god was willing to if they do not turn to god "O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell.
