As the classic American example of fire-and-brimstone Protestant preaching, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” depends, for its effect, on anthropomorphism: ascribing human form and attributes—hands, emotions, and purposive agency—to nonhuman phenomena. Anthropomorphism has been a hotly debated feature of religion since classical antiquity. But, in the modern world, religious anthropomorphism has become especially controversial, while, at the same time, also becoming a crucial concept in modern theories about the very nature of religion.” Modern objections to anthropomorphism have taken two major forms. First, traditions within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have long opposed the worship of “idols,” and regarded anthropomorphism as a dangerous assault against genuine piety and properly theological understanding of existence. In the modern period these religious objections against anthropomorphism have eventuated not only in sophisticated intellectual polemics against anthropomorphic concepts of God but also in popular movements of iconoclasm, which protested against anthropomorphic representations of the divine and sometimes physically destroyed anthropomorphic images. Second, the rise and development of modern science has emphasized the regularity of the processes that structure the natural world. And even when these orderly processes were described as natural “laws”—a term with obvious anthropomorphic connotations—they have generally been understood in ways that are thoroughly impersonal and lacking any intrinsic purpose or design. Hence, modern science has generated numerous questions about religious
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interpretations of influence on the course of nature by divine ideas and purposes. Since the late nineteenth century, many instances of the so-called “warfare” between science and theology have turned on the issue of whether any scientific plausibility could be attached to concepts of a divine mind, purpose, or intention that guided or ordered the structure of the universe." According to the philosopher Charles Taylor, the transition from perceptions of a divinely ordered, purposive universe to an “impersonal order” of nature marked a pivotal change that, especially since the eighteenth century, has shaped “a secular age” among the societies of the modern West.” In short, anthropomorphism has not only become a source of tension within religions but also something of an impasse between religious and scientific interpretations of the universe. Nonetheless, anthropomorphic assumptions remain vigorously present in many of the modern forms of theology, spiritual practice, and religious art, a persistence that suggests the strength of the psychological and social functions performed by anthropomorphic representation.
In light of these longstanding controversies about religious anthropomorphism, the graphically anthropomorphic, spider-dangling deity of Edwards’s sermon would seem to offer a good test case for understanding how anthropomorphic religious language works in the modern era. Such an understanding begins with one of the central themes of this book, namely, the powerful human motivation to establish and maintain social connections. Anthropomorphism extends this drive for social connection beyond the boundaries of human societies by attributing human characteristics to
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