This was a paper I did my senior Year at UMD. It is an analysis of the fear appeals used in the 1600s during the great revival and today in "hell houses".

1. Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God & Hell House
An Analysis of Fear Appeals—Then and Now
By Lacey Solheid
University of Minnesota Duluth
April, 2012
1

2. ―There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell ,
but the mere pleasure of God. By the mere pleasure of God, I mean his
sovereign pleasure, his arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation,
hindered by no manner of difficulty, any more than if nothing else but
God’s mere will had in the least degree, or in any respect whatsoever,
any hand in the preservation of wicked men one moment.‖ –Jonathan
Edwards
In the early 18th Century, a “Great Revival” of sorts was going throughout the
Christian communities. The preachers called the members of their small towns to become
better Christians and follow the faith. The most famous preacher of the time was Jonathan
Edwards. He gave moving “fire and brimstone” speeches that urged people to God. In his
most famous sermon,“Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God,” he used graphic imagery and
extravagant language to describe Hell for the non-believers.Throughout his speech he
explains that at any moment, God can let the non-believers slip into Hell and perish. This
speech is over 270 years old and much of the imagery used might not seem as applicable by
today’s standards. But a new phenomenon is stretching across the country.Hell Houses are
popping up in many different states. They are a contemporary way of preaching the same
message Edwards was preaching two centuries ago.Similar to a haunted house, churches
create elaborate skits and scenes depicting a tour of hell and how those people got there.This
includes a rather graphic scene of abortion, a child shooting himself at school, date rape, and
domestic violence.While it may be hard to see how the 270 year old sermon may apply to
today’s world, the Hell House is very real and getting a lot of attention.They continue to
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3. push their shows further and further before, strategically planning what their scenarios will
be based on what is important to that year’s society. The Hell House creators claim that they
are not using scare tactics to attract people to the Christian faith, but this essay will beg to
differ.Both “Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God” and Hell House use fear appeals to get
their audience to either convert or recommit themselves to God.In the documentary watched
depicting the planning and carrying out of Hell House, one of the workers is seen talking to
the audience.“This is not a scare tactic. This is not a guilt trip we’re trying to play on you.
This is about as you saw in each seen, someone died. And when they died, they either went
to heaven or hell… If you were to die tonight, do you know where you would go?”(Ratlife
1:17:00). Although it claims not to be a scare tactic, it can be said that they are doing
exactly what they say they are not.
This essay hopes to evaluate the fear appeals used by Jonathan Edwards in his
“Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God” sermon and Trinity Church’s Hell House by
evaluating their appeals in Kim Witte’s Extended Parallel Process Model.Were fear appeals
used based on the model? Are these fear appeals seen as effective? Are the fear appeals
logical?
Both Edwards and Hell House play on the idea that Hell is a very near threat and
play on those fears. In defining fear as an emotion, Aristotle wrote in Book II: “Let fear be
defined as a sort of pain and agitation derived from the imagination of a future destructive or
painful evil…and these if they do not appear to be far off but near, so that they are about to
happen; for what is far off is not feared...”(128). He is saying that what is happening now
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4. and in the near future is what is feared—not necessarily those events that seem far off and
impossible.Witte defines fear very similarly to the way Aristotle does.“Fear is one of the
basic human emotions. Definitionally, it is a negatively valenced emotion accompanied by a
high level of arousal and is elicited by a threat that is perceived to be significant and
personally relevant. The elicitation of fear may occur following an appraisal of a threatening
situation or stimulus with or without an individual’s conscious intention or
awareness”(424). She believes that in order to fear something, it must be seen as relevant to
the person feeling the pain.
Edwards used vivid images to paint a picture of an angry God that does not seem
very far away. He created a sort of reality for his listeners it seemed as though Hell was
inevitable if the Christian faith was not followed. He describes the reality of how close God
is: “The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice
bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of
God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the
arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood”(8-9).He uses the images of an
arrow to show the immediacy of God’s wrath. At any moment, without warning, God can
release the arrow and send the members of the audience and community to Hell.
The Hell House also creates this sense of near and present danger, but does it in a
different way. Despite the graphic depictions of death, the intended audience for Hell House
is comprised of teens and young adults. There are adults that attend, but younger people are
who they hope to reach out to. Because of this, they often draw upon the children and teens
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5. at a local school to act and perform the skits. In using children as the actors, it creates the
sense of reality for the audience that it could be them in the compromising positions they are
witnessing. There is also a sense of immediacy in Hell House because they draw upon many
problems happening in the current society. One of the major examples is a school shooting.
In one of the first scenes the audience comes upon, a teacher and her class are bullying a
student. The student becomes so fed up with their comments and criticism that he takes out
a gun and shoots himself. A girl dressed as the Grim Reaper then drags him off to Hell
kicking and screaming. The Hell House knows that shootings in schools do happen. There
seems to always be at least one every year that comes up in the media. Knowing that things
like this does happen, the Hell House can utilize this knowledge to scare its audience into
believing the danger and threat is near to them.
The use of fear can also be seen as a way to control and manipulate people.Barry
Glassner defines the techniques used by fear mongers who use appeals to fear to control the
audiences. In his article, he talks about those who use power to manipulate.“In a culture of
fear, politicians and advocacy groups use and abuse collective anxieties for narrow political
gains. Having helped to instill fears, they capitalize upon them to win elections…”(826).
Those in charge instill a fear in an audience in attempt to further their own agendas. David
Altheide agrees.“Citizens beliefs are constructed and then manipulated by those who see to
benefit. Fear does not just happen; it is socially constructed and managed by political actors
to promote their own goals. The goal of such manipulators might be money, but more often
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6. than not it is political power and symbolic dominance: getting one’s view of the world
accepted opens the door to many other programs and activities to implement this view”(18).
Both of these views can also be applied to Edwards and Hell House.
In the early 1700s, the leaders of many towns and cities were not government
officials, but the religious leaders of the time. They were typically the ones looked to for
advice and decisions. They were almost automatically given the credibility and
reputation.“The power of the Church in Puritan new England was enormous. Besides the
family, the Church became the most powerful institutional tool for controlling the young
people of the second generation…The sermon was the central and commanding incident in
their lives; theaters were forbidden and the religious service was the only possible
communal gathering for both men and women”(Garrigos 106). Because Edwards was so
looked upon in his community, he could be considered a fear monger. He was able to create
powerful, repetitive images for his audience.He creates these scary images to get people to
come closer to the church and to change the way they act in their normal lives. If the
community didn’t follow the Christian teachings, he would be out of a job and out of the
power seat in the community. Because power seems to be very important to many people of
the world, he wields his power over the audience to continue to build upon his power.
The creators of the Hell House also construct fear in the audience to further an
agenda as well. Hell House is meant to create this fear in the audience to ultimately convert
to Christianity and potentially their church. Again, if there are no members to their church
or people following their church, they do not have the resources to put on the Hell House
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7. every year.By being able to do this event, the door has been opened for future events.
According to the video, over 75,000 people came to visit Hell House over the past few
years. They have been able to reach out to a very large community. Once they found that
people were interested in what they were doing, they have continued to push the envelope to
see what they could get away with in the community.They can continue to put on the
controversial show.
There is very much a social component to fear that is played on by both Edwards and
Hell House as well.Dillard sees the social environment as the most important to humans and
human behavior because it creates hierarchies.“...The challenges of social life are reducible
to just two over arching issues: getting along and getting ahead. The human group creates
status hierarchies and networks of affiliation that correspond to these two issues. Together
they constitute social structure”(xxii). In both the sermon and Hell House, there is a definite
hierarchy. In both, those that are the believers that know that they are not going to hell are
far above those that do not know. They share with their audiences the benefits of being a
Christian in order to convince them to convert to their ways. In a sense, they are pressuring
their audience to accept what they are saying and do as they do—a very social thought.The
sermon also puts the believers and followers in a better position than the non-believers.“If
we knew that there was one person, and but one, in the whole congregations, that was to be
the subject of this misery, what an awful thing would it be to think of! If we knew who it
was, what an awful sight would it be to see such a person!”(13-14). He wants to create this
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8. environment that uses social pressure on others. No one wants to be that one person that is
left out. He urges people to take the side that he is on so that no one feels left out.
Emotions, especially fear, are learned through the social process as well.One cannot
be born with the fear a god, for gods and religion are totally instilled upon an individual by
his or her culture, family and community. Learned fear happens very quickly and can
remain with a person for the rest of their life. They will have the ability to retrieve the
information in their brain to build upon their thoughts. It can also affect the behavior and
actions for an individual.“Once these behavior get ingrained, they become part of their own
reality, determining the behavioral patterns of an individual”(Debiec & LeDoux 809).
Applying that idea to Edwards and Hell House, they hope to present a case that
makes it so clear that Hell is a bad place to force people to want to avoid that situation. If a
person truly believes that they are going to Hell and are scared of what could happen to
them, they will act in such a way to avoid that from happening. In reality, what Edwards
was preaching was really not new information to his audience.“They were meant primarily
to remindcongregations of what they already knew and believed to give congregations
opportunities to review and possibly experience anew his repetitive Calvinist theme of
predestination”(Yarbrough and Adams 1). The audience was already aware of what could
happen, but Edwards continually gave them fearful images of burning and wrath to help
them rethink what they already knew about Hell.
Especially evident in Hell House and their depiction of an abortion and death of a
homosexual from AIDS. They want the audience to see that if they accept the Lord and
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9. follow what he wants them to do, they will avoid going to Hell. They are then shown the
constant torture and everlasting pain of Hell for their own eyes in a different scene.They are
shown what could potentially happen if they do not act in a way that prevents this from
happening to them.
Because fear is a learned process, there is a cognitive component to it.Nussbaum
believes emotions to be a cognitive process that is intentional and direct.“Emotions are
forms of intentional awareness: that is (since no ancient term corresponds precisely to these
terms), they are forms of awareness directed at or about an object, in which the object
figures as it is seen from the creature’s point of view. Anger, for example, is not, or not
simply, a bodily reaction (such as boiling of the blood). To give adequate account of it, one
must mention the object to which it is directed, what it’s about and for. And when we do
this, we characterize the object as it is seen by the person experiencing the emotion, whether
that view is correct or not: my anger depends upon the way I view you and what you have
done, not on the way you really are or what you really have done”(303-304). There is a
cognitive part to emotions where the person feeling the fear must actually believe that there
is a threat and they are scared or feel emotion toward the threat.“To fear that something is so
quite plainly involves cognitive and attitudinal states. If all fear involves fearing that
something is so, then all fear involves such states”(Gordon 560-561).Whether Hell is
actually a scary place, and the way in which it is described the artifacts makes it seem like a
place to fear,people decide that for themselves whether Hell exists or not.This is also similar
to K. Walton. Walton believes that our realities are grounded in a fictional world we make
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10. up in our minds.“I suggest that much of the value of dreaming, fantasizing and making-
believe depends crucially on one’s thinking of oneself as belonging to a fictional world. It is
chiefly by fictionally facing certain situations, engaging in certain activities, and having or
expressing certain feelings I think, that a dreamer, fantasizer, or game player comes to terms
with his actual feelings—that he discovers them, learns to accept them, purges himself of
them or whatever exactly it is that he does”(24). He believes that by imagining certain
situations, in this case Hell, we prepare ourselves to avoid that situation should it arise.
People create their own reality. Edwards and Hell House help the audience to imagine what
they could face should they not accept what they are saying.
Cognition is a part of feeling fear. Since there must be a moment of thinking through
the fear appeals, there are those few people that are resistant to fear appeals. At times, fear
appeals can cause a feeling of pain in the audience. Pfau says that because people would
rather avoid painful experiences, they will stray away from those using fear appeals—which
proves problematic for the speaker using fear appeals (222). The two types of people that
are resistant to the fear appeals are those that are overly confident (and experience a lot of
pleasure) and those that are hopeless (and experience a lot of pain)(Pfau 222). In order to
get through an overly confident audience, the speaker must make them feel vulnerable. The
other set of people are those that are hopeless and feel no way of getting out. These are the
two people that are resistant to fear appeals.
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11. Edwards and Hell House function the same way. It is hard to get through to an
overly confident audience that already believes they are saved or that they are invincible to
being affected by God. They do not feel they need to be saved. In order to effectively reach
those people, the speaker must make them feel like they are vulnerable. Edwards attempts
this by trying to make it seem as though the wrath and anger of God can happen to anyone at
anytime. This is done through his attempts to make it seem as though the threat is very close
at all times. And his repetition of this message throughout his sermon. In a scene of the
documentary on the making of Hell House, a group of young people discuss the Hell House
with the people on the planning team. The young students are clearly on the spectrum of the
people that are not affected by the fear appeals. They believed that Hell House had gone too
far in their depictions of events. The appeals did not work on these students and they were
clearly upset had what they had just witnessed.
A fear appeal is “recognized as a distinctive type of argumentation by empirical
researchers, where it is seen as a kind of argument used to threaten a target audience with a
fearful outcome (most typically the outcome is the likelihood of death), in order to get the
audience to adopt a recommended response”(D. Walton 1).The speaker wants the audience
to act in a certain way because of the fear appeal used.Walton later goes on to say there are
basically two parts to a fear appeal, but other situations can be a little more complicated than
just the two parts.“In most fear appeal arguments, the conditional is a simple two-step
connection between two propositions or events—the hearer is told that if he carries out some
action, then some bad event will occur that is fearful to him. However, in some cases, the
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12. fear appeal argument can be more complex in its structure. What is alleged by the speaker is
that if the hearer carries out one action, then that will lead to another, and so forth, in a
sequence of connected events that results in some horrible or fearful outcome. What is
fearful for the respondent in this type of argument can be not only the final outcome, but
also the uncertainty and insecurity attached to the uncontrollability of this
sequence”(Walton 14). Some basic appeals are simply a speaker telling an audience that
something bad will happen if they do a certain action, while others create a series of events
that could lead to that bad event.
Based on Walton’s definition, both “Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God” and
Hell House could be seen as a fear appeal. At many times throughout his sermon, Edwards
tells the audience that if they do not accept God, they will go to Hell. He urges the
congregation to follow the ways of the Lord.“How dreadful is the state of those that are
daily and hourly in the danger of this great wrath and infinite misery! But this is the dismal
case of every soul in this congregation that has not been born again, however moral and
strict, sober and religious, they may otherwise be. Oh that you would consider it, whether
you be young or old!”(13-14). If people in the audience have not decided to follow the
faith, it is now the time to choose to do so to avoid all of the scary, vengeful things that God
can do to the non-believers.He had to convince them that Hell was a terrible place.“In order
to use fear appeals for the glory of God, the preacher had to make the members of the
congregation sense the awfulness of hell psychosomatically—in the body and the mind.
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13. That sense had to be a true sense of the heart, a true convictions, rather than merely a
speculative or notional or otherwise bookish understanding of Hell”(Jackson 47-48).
Although the Hell House organizers do not see their tactics as fear appeals, it is clear
that they utilize this scare tactics in their skits. In the same scene from the opening
paragraph, one of the leaders explains what happens after witnessing Hell.“There are people
in the next room waiting to pray with you should you choose to do so. If you were to die
tonight, do you know where you will go? Or do you think that you know? Because if you
think that you know, then you’re taking a chance with your soul for eternity”(Ratlife
1:17:30). He wants them to be certain that they are not going to Hell. He wants the audience
to go to the other room and pray with the people there so they can know for sure that they
are going to Heaven.If they don’t walk through that door, they are condemned to Hell after
they leave. This is clearly a fear appeal. If the audience does a certain action, they will have
a fearful, terrifying outcome that they just witnessed in the Hell House.
Witte created the EPPM to evaluate fear appeals. There are three parts to the EPPM:
threat, efficacy, and danger control or fear control. She defines fear as“an internal emotional
reaction composed of psychological and physiological dimensions that may be aroused
when a serious and personally relevant threat is perceived”(429).Fear is the feeling that is
comes about when a perceived threat is near. There are two parts to feeling the threat:
perceived susceptibility and perceived severity. A person must feel as though they could
potentially experience the threat and also believe the threat to be severe enough to harm
them.“If people do not believe themselves to be at-risk for experiencing a health threat (low
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14. susceptibility) and/or believe the health threat to be trivial (low severity), they will simply
not respond to the message because they are not motivated to do so”(428).
The second part of the EPPM is efficacy. People must believe that their actions could
prevent this threat from happening to them. Efficacy “pertains to the effectiveness,
feasibility, and ease with which a recommended response impedes or averts a threat.
Perceived efficacy as thoughts or cognitions about its underlying dimensions, response
efficacy and self-efficacy”(429). Here there are two parts as well: response efficacy and self
efficacy. The first being “beliefs about the effectiveness of the recommended response in
deterring the threat. The second being “beliefs about one’s ability to perform the
recommended response in deterring the threat”(429). The audience must feel that the action
being recommended by the speaker will help to solve the problem, and that they can carry
out those actions themselves. Finally, the audience’s reaction will either be danger control
or fear control.
Danger control and fear control are two different things. Danger control is a
“cognitive process eliciting protection motivation that occurs when one believes she or he is
able to effectively avert a significant and relevant threat through self protective changes.
When in danger control people think of strategies to avert a threat”(429). In turn, fear
control is “an emotional process eliciting defensive motivation that occurs when people are
faced with a significant and relevant threat but believe themselves to be unable to perform a
recommencedresponse and/or they believe the response to be ineffective. The high levels of
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15. fear cause by this condition produce defensive motivation resulting in coping responses that
reduce fear and prevent danger control responses from occurring”(429).
By the EPPM, if Edwards and Hell House should be able to effectively use fear
appeals.Each attempts to create a threat in which the audiences not only feel like they are
susceptible to the threat of Hell, but also that Hell is a terrible place. The audience can then
evaluate whether or not they think the suggested action of the speaker would actually solve
their problem and whether or not they believe they can carry out the action. If Edwards and
Hell House can cause their audiences to believe that they are capable of accepting God and
that by doing so it will save them from Hell, they have potentially used an effective fear
appeal. In both of the situations, the desired outcome is to have the audiences take the
accounts of the speaker and believe that they are true and could happen. The speaker also
wants the audience to believe the course of action they are suggesting (converting or
recommitting to Christianity) is plausible for the audience to achieve. Now, to apply both
Edwards’ speech and Hell House to this model.
“Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God” follows the EPPM very closely.It was
established earlier in this paper that there must be a threat that is present. Edwards clearly
established how great of a threat going to Hell was.“O Sinner! Consider the fearful danger
you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire o wrath,
that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as
much against you, as against many of the damned to hell”(Edwards 9).He clearly tells the
audience that they currently face a threat and are vulnerable to the pit of Hell. He also
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16. creates a sense of efficacy in the audience. He creates a feeling of susceptibility when he
constantly reminds them that it could happen at any moment to any person.“It implies, that
they were always exposed to sudden unexpected destruction. As he that walks in slippery
places is every moment liable to fall, he cannot foresee one moment whether he shall stand
or fall the next; and when he does fall, he falls at once without warning”(Edwards
2).Anyone in the audience is capable of slipping and falling at any moment into Hell. There
is also a sense of severity of Hell throughout the speech as well.“The wrath of God burns
against them, their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared, the is made ready, the
furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow. The glittering
sword is whet, and held over them, and the pit hath opened its mouth under them”(Edwards
4).Edwards is able to use words and figurative language to make the audience believe that
they can be sent to Hell at any moment at the hands of God. After establishing that the threat
exists, Edwards also explains that by following God and accepting him as the father will
lead to a good life and heaven. He explains that there are so many opportunities to convert,
why watch other people celebrate, why not join in? He creates a response efficacy by
showing the audience that good times are to follow should they do what he is asking.“And
now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day where in Christ has thrown the door of
mercy wide open, and stands in calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners; a day
wherein many are flocking to him, and pressing into the kingdom of God”(Edwards 14). He
also makes it seem like it is easy for each member of the audience to do.“Let every one that
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17. is yet out of Christ, and hanging over the pit of hell, whether they be old me and women, or
middle aged, or young people, or little children, now harken to the loud calls of God’s word
and providence”(Edwards 15). No matter someone’s age in the audience, it is possible for
them to accept his message and carry out his request.
The EPPM can be applied to the Hell House as well. To create a sense of threat they
make the situations seem very realistic. They use realistic props and costumes. They also
show a variety of situations that teens and families go through on a daily basis including
domestic violence, drugs and alcohol, bullying, suicide, homosexuality, and abortions. The
Hell House creates a feeling in the audience that it can happen to anyone. While most of the
actors are teens, there are a few adults in roles as well. A wide spectrum of people is used to
create a feeling that anyone can find themselves in some of the situations they are watching.
The scene at the end of the show depicts Hell and shows the constant torture, suffering and
brutality of Hell. They show the pain and agony people face when condemned there. Hell
House was able to show the fiery pit of Hell and its destruction. At the end of the show, the
audience is then witnessed to and urged to walk through a door to pray with someone along
their journey. The simple and easy thing for the audience member to do is to walk through
the door and they will forever be saved. The Hell House makes it seem as though it is very
easy to avoid the threat of Hell.
In both situations, the speakers want the outcome to be danger control. If they were
partaking in fear control, they would feel as though they were not capable of carrying out
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18. the requests of the speakers. In danger control situations, the audience would feel as though
they are capable of the request and carry out the task to lower their fear.
Finally, Edwards’ sermon and Hell House will be analyzed on whether or not their
fear appeals are logical.“Some fear appeal arguments work by sketching out a picture that
suggests (often rather vaguely) something that is highly fearful to a target audience. This
type of fear appeal argument tends to be logically weak, because it is based on suggestions
instead of hard evidence that the fearful event really will occur”(Walton 14). While the fear
appeals that are used in both situations are not vague, they are not seen as logical. The fear
appeal is weak because there are no hard facts to say who is or is not going to be condemned
to Hell.Aristotle would also agree with this because he sees that emotions tend to warp our
judgment. “[There is persuasion] through hearers when they are led to feeling free emotions
by the speech; for we do not give the same judgment when grieved and rejoicing or when
being friendly and hostile” (39). The appeals used by both the Hell House and the “Sinners
at the Hands of an Angry God” sermon are not seen as logical.
Through this essay, fear appeals in two religious artifacts were studied. While Hell
House claims not to be a scare tactic, it is in fact a fear appeal according to the EPPM.Both
situations create a scenario in which a threat is seen as being close and very terrifying. Fear
can also be used to manipulate people and used by those in power. Edwards and Hell House
utilize their position to further their agendas. There is a social and learned component to fear
that is evident throughout the sermon and Hell House as well. It is not something that we are
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19. naturally born with, it is something that in ingrained in us by the culture we immerse
ourselves in. In all, there are fear appeals used in the Christian faith. It was used two
centuries ago by men in wigs and it is continually seen in contemporary churches with
people in costumes. Whether a person takes the time to evaluate the messages they are
hearing, is up to them.
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