Analysis Of Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God, By Martin Luther King

Speaker John Edwards preached God’s word in the name of puritism in 1741 throughout New England in a speech titled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”. Simply because they had nothing else to do, entire communities gathered to listen to the passionate speech on God’s wrathful view of the human race and why puritism was the only way to be saved from His wrath. In the years following, Edwards’ sermons helped to spark the most significant religious renewal, The Great Awakening, in colonial history. In a similar way, social rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote a letter to eight clergymen on April 12, 1963 from Birmingham Jail to defend his nonviolent approach to protest. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” respectively implored the clergymen

In a similar way to Edwards, King compares two contradictory subjects that share a common characteristic. He speaks directly to the white moderate, saying “...they become the dangerously structured dams…” (page 267). In this case, the white moderates are the clergymen, acting as a dam for the flow of nature, or, in this case, social progress. King implies that even with the moderates delaying the social change, soon the pressure of the movement will become too much to withhold, and the waters of change will overflow. In another way, King compares the state of the country to an opposing countries of Asia and Africa, stating, “...we still creep at horse and buggy pace…” (page 264). King names the United States as the inferior power moving toward progress slower than it’s neighboring nations. As a result, the clergyman must realize that for the United States to remain a world-power as they hope, segregation must come to an ed. No matter the stance of the audience, King’s strategic use of a metaphors between the moderate clergymen and dams in addition to the describing the country as moving at horse and buggy pace prove that the Civil Rights Movement must happen, with or without the moderates’

After the eight clergymen released a public statement directed towards King’s “extreme” leadership in the Civil Rights Movement, King decided to respond in his letter. He used a variety of allusions, targeting scholars, history, and, directed closest to the audience, the bible: “Was not Jesus an extremist…” (page 269). Because the eight clergymen consider themselves men of God, King alludes to Jesus’s extremes. If the clergymen rejoice and respect Jesus’s duties as an extremist, planning to insult King’s efforts backfired: King used the slander to his advantage, building ethos of himself as a man of God. Constructing more credibility, King writes, “...just as the Apostle Paul left his village...and carried out the gospel of Jesus Christ… so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my hometown.” (page 262). At the time of his arrest, King went against the city’s wishes and protested in Birmingham as a visiting social rights activist. In their public statement, the clergymen described King as an “outsider” who lead to “unwise and untimely” demonstrations. King counteracts the descriptions by again presenting himself as a man of God. In his letter, King implies that he is only protesting in cities outside his hometown like Apostle Paul did to carry out the word of Jesus. The biblical allusions force the audience to either accept King’s efforts or to be