Friday, March 03, 2006

the cross and the crown

One of the most influential historical 'takes' on early Methodism was that offered by E.P. Thompson in his book 'The Making of the English Working Class'. Thompson was a Methodist minister's son and a Marxist, and he offered a compelling and (in many ways) insightful portrayal of nineteenth-century Methodism that was almost entirely hostile. Methodism, he argued, was the method by which the English working class was transformed into a docile industrial workforce. Methodism taught the English poor that life was crucifixion, and that disciplined work was the path to salvation. Thompson used the memorable phrase 'psychic masturbation' to describe the outpourings of emotion at Methodist meetings: these 'Sabbath orgasms of feeling' were the result of a week-long repression of all normal emotion in the disciplines of work.
Now Thompson was wrong about a lot of things, but he was right about the 'life as crucifixion' bit. His main argument is based on Charles Wesley's hymns, which do encourage Methodists to believe that suffering is the only path to sanctification, and so Christian life will be a pattern of cross followed by heavenly crown. In the chapter I've just rewritten, I've been assessing Thompson's argument from a number of angles: was he right about the message of the hymns, do they represent broader Methodist opinion, and did the construction of life as crucifixion really lead to political quietism. The answers, for anyone who's interested are yes, not entirely and possibly.
While I agree with Thompson in parts, I am arguing strongly that the 'cross and crown' model of life does not always lead to acceptance of the status quo. In fact, quite the opposite. I end my chapter with the story of Dorothy Ripley, a Methodist woman who sailed from Whitby to America alone in 1801 to campaign against American slavery. Ripley spent the next 30 years working against slavery, crossing the Atlantic nine times, speaking to Congress, confronting angry slaveholders, starting schools for ex-slaves and eventually campaigning for prison reform and the protection of Native American rights. At the beginning of her first journey to America, she wrote in a prayer: 'And if great suffering be my allotment to ally me to thee, let me never shrink from the bitter cup offered in mercy.' For Ripley, the conviction that 'great suffering' was a valuable part of sanctification helped sustain her through the pains and demands of a life of activism.
I've written before about my ambivalence about the history of evangelical activism: often paternalistic and ignorant, doing much harm as well as good. But there is no doubt in my mind that evangelicals have sustained the kind of passionate, difficult, sacrifical activism that they have because of precisely the conviction that Thompson decries. The cross is inevitable but it leads to the crown. While writing this chapter I had my argument confirmed by a quote from Charles Marsh's book about faith-based activism in the US, The Beloved Community. Marsh quotes a Pentecostal activist, working in community development in urban ghettos, who says in regard to Christian unwillingness to work for and with the poor: 'People don't want to accept that the cross comes before the crown'.

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