Wesleyan Propaganda
The Wesleyan leadership did not undertake to improve their reputation with discipline alone. Through propaganda they capitalised on the greater level of discipline in an attempt to reform their image. Hempton claims the Methodists used propaganda to project an industrious and well disposed image. The Methodist Magazine was utilised to print supportive tracts about the monarchy, praising the King's wariness of reformers. The movement was portrayed as a conservative force; the leadership claiming Methodism promoted "subordination and industry in the lower orders." While promoting this image of Methodists, the Wesleyan leadership also moved to escape old slurs. One obstacle to Methodist respectability was their association with ignorance and superstition. The leadership tried to shake off this reputation. In Wales, 1801, they warned their members against involvement in sorcery, magic, and witchcraft, and in 1816 fifty members of the Portland Methodist Society were struck off for maintaining belief in the supernatural. Not only does this demonstrate that the Wesleyan transition to denominational conservatism resulted in less toleration for alternate beliefs; it also demonstrates that there was less toleration for non-bourgeois beliefs. This illustrates why the association of Bourne and Clowes with Crawfoot was unacceptable to the leadership. It also suggests a gulf between the outlook of the Wesleyan leadership and the Methodist rank and file.
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Famous quotes containing the word propaganda:
“All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly deconstructive. For if the complex can be put into the simple, then it cannot be as complex as it seemed in the first place; and if the simple can be an adequate medium of such complexity, then it cannot after all be as simple as all that.”
—Terry Eagleton (b. 1943)