History Puts Everyday Life in Forefront : Education: Diaries, speeches, even sermons take on significance as schools incorporate a literature-based social studies curriculum.

You can bet that few students at Toll Junior High School in Glendale ever attended a church service like this:

“Oh sinner, consider the fearful danger you are in,” thundered preacher Jonathan Edwards, also known as eighth-grade social studies teacher Bill Sanderl. “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, is dreadfully angered.”

For this lesson, Sanderl was wearing a fake gray Moses beard. Raising a clenched fist, he exhorted the class with excerpts from the famous 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

“There are black clouds of God’s hateful wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm and big with thunder,” Sanderl intoned.

The 250-year-old speech didn’t strike much fear in adolescents weaned on “Rambo” and “Nightmare on Elm Street.”

But it did prompt a class discussion about “The Great Awakening,” a period in American history when the early colonists began to question established political and religious authority. Historians say this era was pivotal in sparking the feelings of independence that eventually led to the American Revolution.

In Sanderl’s eighth-grade class, texts such as Edwards’ fire-and-brimstone sermon aren’t meant as religious instruction, but rather to help bring home the values and concerns that motivated early Americans.

Throughout California, schools have this year adopted a multicultural, literature-based social studies curriculum. The format uses books, diaries and speeches to bring history to life, and encourages teachers to weave in the contributions of minority groups.

Such an approach strikes a special chord at schools such as Toll, where many students are recent immigrants trying to put down roots in a new land.

For instance, to understand how different ethnic groups contributed to the development of the English language, the class wrote essays incorporating words such as okra (African), squash (American Indian), beer (German) and woodchuck (American Indian.)

When studying the witch-burning hysteria that gripped the American colonies in the late 17th Century, Sanderl’s students wrote their own short plays about the Salem witch trials.

But on this day, it was early Colonial religious sentiment that held sway:

“If you had attended Jonathan Edwards’ sermon and heard these words, tell me one feeling you would have had and why,” Sanderl asked the class.

Eva Solomon, 13, raised her hand.

“Helplessness,” she said.

“That’s right, like if you woke up and felt an earthquake,” Sanderl responded, using a symbol that just about everyone in Southern California can understand.

The analysis continued through the rest of Edwards’ sermon, with students listing the scary imagery such as “bottomless pit,” “hell,” “great furnace.”

“I want you to get a feel for what people back then were like when this country was created, what they were thinking about, what kinds of personalities they had,” Sanderl said.

Other students said the sermon conjured up feelings of surprise, relief, thanksgiving and gratitude.

“Now that’s a good one,” Sanderl said, echoing the last word. He expounded on how sermons such as Edwards’ brought about catharsis as parishioners found salvation in God.

This, in turn, gave the colonists moral strength to stand up against what they felt were injustices by England.

“If God was so angry and yet he’s going to save me, I must have value,” Sanderl said. “You’ll find that England treated the colonists like dirt, like they weren’t worth anything. And they finally said: ‘Hey, England, I’m not going to take it.’ ”

After the bell rang, Sanderl sat back at his desk and mused about the difficulties inherent in digesting a 250-year-old primary text. “They have to muddle through it,” he said. Nonetheless, Sanderl said it was important for students to understand the cadence and metaphors used in the 1700s.

“There was a very defensive element to the early American character,” Sanderl said. “Its people were guarded, suspicious, forever on their guard for even the slightest reduction of their freedom.”

As students scurried off for their next period, Dvin Bahariance, 13, an Armenian student from Iran, said he liked the new approach to history.

“When we were in Iran, there weren’t so many people from different cultures,” Dvin said. “Here, everyone’s mixed up. We need to learn about each other.”