Methodist self-control practices threatened the passivity at their faith’s core

Evidence

Religious history is a discursive domain in which the notion of agency is richly played out. Thus in eighteenth-century England, a combination of secular ideas about human perfectability with Christian ideas about Christ’s suffering issued among evangelicals in a self that was at once active and passive. “The theology of the Atonement,” writes Phyllis Mack, “taught women and men to be little children, passively resting in the arms (or wounds) of Christ, but the theology of universal perfectability pushed them toward a firmer sense of personal autonomy or self-mastery, which in turn made it more difficult to perceive themselves as dependent on God. The Methodists’ attainment of self-control—the habits of diet, discipline, and reflection that helped them to manage suffering—thus had the potential to threaten the very core of their faith and confidence: the power of the Atonement to wash away sin and conquer death. Agency both increased the desire for self-transcendence and made self-transcendence more diffi- cult to attain. For women as well as men, the problem was not in finding the authority to speak and act; it was in remembering that the authority didn’t belong to them.” — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 379

Categorization

• XREF: A concrete historical instance of the agency/passivity tension that Asad builds toward in the pain passage; also echoes the reader’s sacrifice article theme of self-control versus surrender.