What does it mean for a nation to read its own sermons? This America 250 conversation takes up four of them — Winthrop's A Model of Christian Charity, Edwards's Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Lincoln's Second Inaugural, and King's Mountaintop Sermon — tracing covenant and city-on-a-hill exceptionalism, the personal terror of revival preaching, Lincoln's strange theological restraint amid civil war, and King's prescient final words. The episode closes on what it means to read the dead with charity, and on John Wilsey's new book, God and Country. With host Nadya Williams, John Wilsey (SBTS), and Daniel Williams (Ashland University).

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Chapters

00:00 - Reading Winthrop
02:12 - Welcome and Introductions
04:11 - Why Read Classic Sermons?
06:54 - Winthrop and the Puritan Errand
12:12 - City on a Hill: Promise and Warning
16:37 - Edwards and the Great Awakening
25:18 - Reading the Room in 1741
35:40 - Lincoln's Second Inaugural
43:31 - The Passive Voice and Providence
46:33 - King's Mountaintop Sermon
55:27 - Loving Our Historical Neighbors
1:03:06 - Why History Is Who We Are

Great American Sermons with John Wilsey and Daniel K. Williams [FULL EPISODE]