Nearly 265 years after her legendary fire-and-brimstone forebear delivered his historic sermon warning of hell's horrors, a Squirrel Hill clergywoman is under church scrutiny for joining two women in marriage.The Rev. Janet Edwards, 55, likens performing the ceremony to her famously orthodox ancestor, Jonathan Edwards, preaching to the Mohicans in the 18th century, when racism made Native Americans the object of scorn and fear.
"I would say his acceptance of the Mohicans of the time is similar to my inclusion of gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgendered people now," Janet Edwards said.
..."If the point of (Janet Edwards') analogy is that he followed his conscience and so did she, and that they both went beyond some boundary or other, that's not enough," religious historian and retired University of Chicago professor Martin Marty said.
But Jonathan Edwards scholar Amy Plantiga Pauw, a doctrinal theology professor at Louisville (Ky.) Presbyterian Seminary, calls Janet Edwards' argument persuasive.
"There is a kind of parallel -- Jonathan Edwards was not afraid to challenge so-called respectable Christians of his time," Pauw said.
Born in 1703, Jonathan Edwards is best known for his sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," with its fiery warning to the unrepentant: "The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over a fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath burns towards you like fire."
Edwards' sixth-great granddaughter remembers him for an activism that still inspires her own.
"Marriage is a sacred union of two people who are committed to each other, without regard to gender," Janet Edwards said. "I do not feel I have done anything wrong. On the contrary, I felt I was holding up the vows of my ordination."
