Paper short abstract:

In Northern England, Methodism offered an industrial-era morality. Post-industry, Methodism is waning, its congregations dwindling and greying. This paper reflects upon moral meaning-making among the ageing congregation of a small chapel that had become unhitched from its wider community.

Paper long abstract:

What is it like to grow old with a moral code that has lost its societal resonance? The former textile district in West Yorkshire where I undertook fieldwork in 2011-12 is among the landscapes that feature prominently in E.P. Thompson's classic, The Making of the English Working Class. Thompson was an (in)famous critic of Methodism; I was a diligent fieldwork chapel-goer, sharing my Sundays with a small Methodist congregation who, all over seventy, represented the last generation of local textile workers. As they faced the eventual closure of their beloved chapel, the congregation felt themselves abandoned by the surrounding community. For them, conscious of their age and clutching clear moral values, this was a sure sign of generational lapse. But, had the young wandered far off - or had what had once been a landscape for a good Methodist irrevocably altered? As I will consider here, the chapel's decline signifies a postindustrial social shift. Though Thompson pilloried Methodism, he aptly identified it as a faith for an industrial era; raised through Sunday School and into membership, the West Yorkshire Methodists had been formed in a milieu where to obey the work bell's ring, spurn the pub, and perch attentively in the pew was to be moral. Post-industry, they were growing old, while the morality they shared had, for others, grown dusty. In this paper, I reflect upon the moral meaning-making of working class people ageing and keeping faith amidst postindustrial estrangement.