Freedom through Discipline

Methodism ... left a stigma on the mind of the eighteenth-century poor whilst helping at the same time to smother the growth of a working-class consciousness. Its doctrines perverted all that was healthy in men’s emotions, its creed was cruel and grim, its view of life bleak and joyless. Its place in society closely resembled that of a malignant tumour. Thus a Sheffield undergraduate essayist, year of 1983. The essayist was Methodist bred. For him liberation lay in bondage to E. P. Thompson, year of 1963. His student vigour is as much to be applauded as his interpretation is to be deplored. For him as for so many much older historians the bold stroke or the broad view has become in fact a sweeping into tunnel vision and the emancipation has become in fact a confirmation of old folk wisdom: Methodism is puritanism is repressive is reprehensible. We come very close to the heart of the present volume’s matter: asceticism, or the attainment of spiritual perfection by means of self-discipline. Or at least we come very close to the heart of the matter as it is vulgarly seen, for although asceticism is not a word which is too frequently applied to English protestant Dissent, its associations with discipline, abstinence and repression are far too frequently so applied

Asceticism · Calvinism · Creed · Dissent · Interpretation (philosophy · Methodism · Perfection · Political science · Protestantism · Sanctification · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment · Religious studies · Religious Studies