EP Thompson and the psychic terror of Methodism

Title: EP Thompson and the psychic terror of Methodism
Creator: Boer, Roland
Relation: Thesis Eleven Vol. 110, Issue 1, p. 54-67
Publisher Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0725513612449942
Publisher: Sage
Resource Type: journal article
Date: 2012
Description: Edward P Thompson’s disapproval of Methodism (which was his own background) is well known, especially in The Making of the English Working Class. There he describes it as religious terrorism with a destructive moral machinery and all too reactionary. However, through a close reading of the sections on Methodism, this article reveals an ambivalence within Thompson’s own text. Again and again, he notes in passing that radicals emerged from the Methodist ranks, so much so that the Methodist Conference worked hard to deal with the problem. It would seem that Thompson has stumbled across a political tension within theology, one that he was to explore in much greater detail in his study of Blake.
Subject: 19th century; Methodism; political ambivalence; theology; EP Thompson
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1307540
Identifier: uon:21457
Identifier: ISSN:0725-5136
Language: eng
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