How has the conception of the divine in "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" by Jonathan Edwards influenced spirituality and feelings of guilt? How...

Such
"Fire and Brimstone" preaching uses fear of doing wrong as incentive for the religious
life.  This motif of fear was one that the Puritans held over the community; it was a relgion of
negativity in which good deeds mattered not.  Only faith could save a person and, even then, if
one were not of the "elect," he or she could still not be saved.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's writings are indictments against this fear-of- being-damned
approach, demonstrating that the results of holding a vision of Dante's Inferno over people is
negatory.  Young Goodman Brown goes to his grave "a hoary corpse" as he loses all
faith in humanity, Hester Prynne loses her beauty as she is denied her passion for life; the
Reverend Dimmesdale decays from the inside for lack of openness and joy.

In
contemporary life those religions that are offshoots of Puritanism tell people that certain
things are evil--e.g. alcoholic beverages.  It is interesting that
in the Southeast, where preachers use this Fire and Brimstone...