A few times here I've asserted in response to debunking derogatory remarks about Christianity that Protestantism is what built the West and is responsible for the great prosperity the West and particularly the US have been known for. So now I'll try to put up some evidence for that.
I'm slowly reading this book
Ecclesiastical Megalomania by John W. Robbins, which presents some really interesting history about economic systems. Not a subject I'm normally interested in or good at but I'm plodding through it and learning.
In his Introduction he brings up Max Weber's
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism , published in 1904-5 which I haven't read but now would like to.
Weber argued that the obvious disparities in the economic development of European and American countries were due in part to their different theologies. Those countries whose economies had grown most rapidly were Protestant, and those whose economies had lagged behind were Roman catholic. Now the disparities that Weber noted were a commonplace of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; Jacob Viner told us that no observed in the ninteenth century disputed that fact. [{footnote:}...There was almost universal agreement before Weber...that there was a close historical association between Protestantism and the development of capitalism in its modern forms. {Viner, "Religious Thought and Economic Society"...1978}]
He goes on to say that although Weber had been criticized for overstating the connection he himself thinks otherwise, that
Weber understated the linkage by narrowly limiting his discussion to the "Protestant ethic" and the "spirit" of capitalism... because of an inadequate understanding of Protestantism, specifically Calvinist theology.
...One of Weber's early critics, Felix Rachfahl, pointed out six ways in which Protestantism had fostered the economic growth of Europe:
(1) Protestantism permitted the intellect to be devoted to secular pursuits, not just religious;
(2) Protestantism brought education to the masses;
(3) Protestantism did not encourage indolence and distaste and disdain for labor as Roman Catholicism did;
(4) Protestantism championed independence and individual responsibility;
(5) Protestantism created a higher type of orality.
(6) Protestantism fostered the separation of church and state.
"In all these respects," Rachfal wrote, "Protestantism produced a liberating and stimulating effect upon economic life, but Catholicism a constricting and obstructive one."
Now, all this is new to me but apparently there is a body of literature in agreement with it. I'm sure this doesn't describe individual Catholics and Protestants in any case, at least in the US or the west in general, it's just a general trend that can be traced to the different theologies, and I have to say that I wish I had become a Christian a lot sooner and knew some of this a lot sooner because I have always been a very bad "Protestant" by these definitions, lazy, indolent, stupid about money, the works. And I know some very industrious and hardworking and sensible Catholics. So this is a generalization about the effect of the different theologies on whole societies at large.
He also quotes from an article, "Culture Change and the Rise of Protestantism in Brazil and Chile" by Emilio Willems in Eisenstadt,
The Protestant Ethic and Moderniazation: A Comparative View 1968:
Our field data indicate that in many communities Protestants have gained the reputation among non-Protestants of being especially reliable conscientious and industrious. Numerous interviews with employers left no doubt that Protestant workers are especially sought after and even given advantages...Numberous Protestant assured us that their conversions, regularly described as 'rebirth' had let to economic improvement. The reason given was that prior to conversion they had spent a great deal of money on alcohol, lottery tickets, gambling, tobacco, cosmetics, movies and prostitution.;..
Goes with Catholicism's socialistic thinking too, which I'm going to try to document as well.
He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.
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