Study On The Attitudes Toward Poverty Of John Wesley

Poverty is one of the most important social phenomena during every period of each country. The attitudes toward poverty are directly related with the poverty problem. As one of the most influenced persons in the 18^th century of Britain, John Wesley paid much attention to the poverty problem. Therefore he has played a special part in British history.To discuss the problem, the thesis is divided into four parts focusing on the background and contents of John Wesley's opinions on poverty and its historic significance.In the later 18^th century the Industrial Revolution took place in England. On one hand, the Industrial Revolution bought great economic benefits to the country; on the other hand, it produced lots of phenomena of poverty. Consequently, John Wesley put forward a characteristic view on poverty by criticizing and inheriting the past opinions on poverty both in theology and secular society. At the same time, John Wesley constantly improved his views on poverty during his life. The first and the second parts of the article will deal with these.The third part is to analyze his theory on poverty. It analyses the definition and the origins of poverty, and the attitudes toward the poor people. On the basis of the analyzing, it holds that it is a new theory on poverty. Wesley began to discuss the roots of poverty in different angles of vision and he treated the poor more tolerantly than his contemporaries. The most important is that John Wesley was conscious of the problem of structural unemployment and insisted that both employers and employees should do their efforts to overcome it.John Wesley's theory on poverty has exerted a tremendous influence on English society. First, it promoted to change the social attitudes to poverty and relief; second, the theory and its practices promoted to awake the lower classes. Seeing the origin of poverty from three angles, namely, the government, society and individual, analyzing the poverty from the angles of social allocation and "Involuntary Unemployment" , all of these are helpful to the future opinions on poverty and social security.Certainly, as any other theories, the theory on toward poverty by John Wesley also had its limitations. Because of his political standpoint and the limitation of the social conditions of his times, the theory conveyed to us an impression of conservatism.In my opinion, the attitudes toward poverty by John Wesley are the important link between the traditional poor law and modern social welfare. On one hand, the theory broke the traditional theory about social relief; on the other, it has laid some foundation for the welfare of modern society.