The Surprizing Work of God

Jonathan Edwards preached America’s best-known (and most notorious) sermon Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God in Northampton in 1742. His preaching was a primary driver of the First Great Awakening, a wave of religious fervor that swept the Connecticut Valley in the 1730s and '40s. His commitment to Enlightenment ideals underlay a theology of inclusion, leading him to admit Africans and Native Americans to the church. However, unsurprisingly, like most of his contemporaries, he did not free his slaves. This folk-opera explores the contradictions in Edwards’ thought and influence.

In this moment of profound political division and religious intolerance, composer/playwright Jeff Olmsted shows there was more to Edwards than fire and brimstone, using Edwards’ own words in dialogue with a skeptical present. Edwards’ relationship with his extraordinary wife, his congregation (especially the young people), and with slavery are the themes of songs which also draw on colonial music sources for contemporary song-writing.

Was Jonathan Edwards a theocrat? A democrat? The last Puritan? The first Evangelical? A revolutionary Enlightenment thinker? An early New England Transcendentalist? An annoying scold best-forgotten?

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