The article analyses the discourse on the social order represented in the Methodist literature published in the first half of the 20th century as an expression of a broader social and cultural program to foster social institutions confronted with the problems of the modernization of developing urban spaces. The author argues that the Methodist’s emphases on issues such as hygienic, health, and alimentary habits, reveal religious and educational strategies in terms of a general social engagement in the creation of an supposedly innovative social order.