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What are the effective and ineffective aspects of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"?
Quick answer:
"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is effective in its vivid imagery and appeal to the emotion of the audience. However, the latter appeal is only likely to be effective with those who share Jonathan Edwards's theological viewpoints.
Edwards's famous sermon was incredibly effective if the immediate reaction of his audience is anything to go by. It's no exaggeration to say that many of his auditors were absolutely terrified at his lurid, detailed descriptions of the terrible fate that awaits sinners in the raging flames of hell. It's no wonder that a number of audience members actually fainted in horror.
Even those who managed to remain upright throughout the entire course of Edwards's sermon would have been given much food for thought. Edwards intended to make people think deeply about their lifestyles, whether they were behaving as God-fearing Christians should. He wanted nothing less than to change people's lives for the better, and there's no doubt that many people did indeed heed his word and set themselves on a different path in life.
However, what Edwards had to say wasn't universally accepted. Although just about everyone in America...
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at that time believed in God, not everyone believed that he was the kind of wrathful, vengeful law-giver as presented in the Old Testament. Nor did they believe that hell was a literal place reserved for sinners. That being the case, Edwards's hellfire and brimstonerhetoric would have had no effect on large swathes of the population.
As for myself, Edwards's sermon would've had no effect on me either as his religious beliefs were radically different to mine. (And that's putting it mildly.) Nevertheless, I would still have appreciated his famous sermon as a tour de force of rhetorical brilliance. And that is why, over 250 years later, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is still pored over, studied, and examined by countless individuals over whom Edwards's Calvinist theology holds no sway.
Accounts of the reception of Edwards's sermon that day in 1741 maintain that some in the congregation cried out, some fainted, and some wept. In the short term, it is plausible to assume it shook people up and made them reexamine the ways they were living and thinking about their afterlife. In that way, it could be deemed effective.
It could be said that Edwards's sermon, perhaps a centerpiece of the Great Awakening in the 1730s and 40s, did little to staunch the flow of people abandoning the vestiges of Puritan thought present in his theology. In that way, it was ineffective. As more people came to the colonies, many for reasons unrelated to religious freedom, what came with them were other ways of worship and attitudes toward the role of religion. The Enlightenment greatly influenced the rise of rational thought, and Deism became a more comfortable way for some to think about God.
The last part of your question is more difficult to answer; it's not easy for a person of the 21st century to fully understand the outlook of a person who would have attended this sermon. Since you asked, though, I would say the sermon would be a turn off for me.
Was "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" effective?
By its own standards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” was incredibly effective. In preaching his forbidding sermon, Jonathan Edwards hoped to instill the fear of God into his audience, getting them to change their sinful ways and return to the path of righteousness. And if contemporary reports are anything to go by, he succeeded admirably.
Numerous members of his audience fainted under the assault of Edwards's lurid imagery, which convinced them that they were just one false step away from eternal damnation. Edwards aimed to scare his audience into rejecting a life of sin and embracing the way of Christ, and it is clear from all the available historical evidence that his message was taken seriously by his audiences.
The success of the sermon can also be seen in the enormous contribution it made to the growing numbers of those converted during the Great Awakening, which was arguably the most important religious revival of the period. The fact that Edwards was summoned to deliver this sermon to congregations beyond his own is testimony to the effective of his rhetoric and the perceived importance of his message. The sermon continues to be studied today by theologians, historians, and scholars, who find intellectual interest in Edwards's ideas, style, and impact. By this measure, too, the sermon can be considered effective.