[Kenneth] Woodward locates the Methodist Moment as having begun in modern U.S. politics back in 1972, but he notes that it passed quickly after the flop of Methodist George McGovern\u2019s presidential campaign. Yet Woodward finds good reason to talk about a named \u201cmoment\u201d\u009d because, as it slows or morphs, it leaves behind a changed landscape\u201d\u201dthink of a glacial moraine, which marks where a glacier once changed a mountainside, then lives on in stony and rocky residue. We live off that residue in the new landscape. Woodward lists many features of this Methodist influence in political movements, some of which he does not favor at all, and others which have to be reckoned with anew.<\/p>\n
My interest in \u201cepisodes\u201d\u009d and \u201cmoments\u201d\u009d derives from my impulse to caution against utopian visions of causes, the belief that this time \u201cwe\u201d\u009d have invented or devised or worked for a continually energetic movement or achievement. The concept of the \u201cmoment\u201d\u009d is a reminder that nothing lasts, but that participants in efforts to change, though they do not win, may well be deserving of investment, renewal, revisitation. Only believers in inevitable and enduring progress, or who idolize their own efforts and causes, forget that episodes and moments come and go\u201d\u201dfor better and\/or for worse.<\/p>\n