Thursday, February 7, 2019

Jonathan Edwards

by Simonetta Carr

64 pages / 2014

With Jonathan Edwards Simonetta Carr continues her series of picturebook "Christian biographies for young readers." This is one of 13 so far.

Two hundred years after Luther and Calvin, God used the Connecticut-born Jonathan Edwards to bring a Reformation of sorts to churches on this side of the ocean too. At the time there were many who professed to be believers, but who had no hatred of their own sins, and saw no real need to fight them. Then here came Edwards, preaching about the coming wrath of God against sin. Now, he preached on much more than this, but it was his fire and brimstone sermons that God used to spark a revival and shake people out of their ambivalence.

Edwards' "Sinners in the hands of an angry God" sermon is famous, as is his story about a spider dangling over a fire, which illustrates our own precarious state when we haven't yet reconciled with God. But the rest of his life isn't well known. People think, based on his "angry God" sermon that Edwards was all hell and damnation but as Carr shows, that wasn't at all true. She presents Edwards as a nature-loving young man as curious about science as he was about God's Word. The two, to him, seemed a natural fit.

Carr commissioned a dozen full-page color paintings to illustrate the book and makes use of a couple dozen other pictures to make this a true picture book – every two-page spread has a picture or two. It is also an attractively bound book, making this something that can be passed from one generation to the next. And she has summarized Edwards' life in a clear and compelling fashion.

That said, this is not a book that most children will readily pull off the shelf. It is beautiful, but it's not about cute cartoon mice, and it doesn't have bright garish colors so it will have a hard time competing with everything else out to grab children's attention. But while this one might not be the right choice for a present from grandma and grandpa, it is a book that every Christian school should own and every Church history teacher will be able to put to good use – it is a fantastic educational resource that makes learning about Edwards easy.

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