The Calvinist Manifesto

THIS year is the 100th anniversary of the most famous sociological tract ever written, ''The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,'' by Max Weber. It was a book that stood Karl Marx on his head. Religion, according to Weber, was not an ideology produced by economic interests (the ''opiate of the masses,'' as Marx had put it); rather, it was what had made the modern capitalist world possible. In the present decade, when cultures seem to be clashing and religion is frequently blamed for the failures of modernization and democracy in the Muslim world, Weber's book and ideas deserve a fresh look.

Weber's argument centered on ascetic Protestantism. He said that the Calvinist doctrine of predestination led believers to seek to demonstrate their elect status, which they did by engaging in commerce and worldly accumulation. In this way, Protestantism created a work ethic -- that is, the valuing of work for its own sake rather than for its results -- and demolished the older Aristotelian-Roman Catholic doctrine that one should acquire only as much wealth as one needed to live well. In addition, Protestantism admonished its believers to behave morally outside the boundaries of the family, which was crucial in creating a system of social trust.

The Weber thesis was controversial from the moment it was published. Various scholars stated that it was empirically wrong about the superior economic performance of Protestants over Catholics; that Catholic societies had started to develop modern capitalism long before the Reformation; and that it was the Counter-Reformation rather than Catholicism itself that had led to economic backwardness. The German economist Werner Sombart claimed to have found the functional equivalent of the Protestant ethic in Judaism; Robert Bellah discovered it in Japan's Tokugawa Buddhism.

It is safe to say that most contemporary economists do not take Weber's hypothesis, or any other culturalist theory of economic growth, seriously. Many maintain that culture is a residual category in which lazy social scientists take refuge when they can't develop a more rigorous theory. There is indeed reason to be cautious about using culture to explain economic and political outcomes. Weber's own writings on the other great world religions and their impact on modernization serve as warnings. His book ''The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism'' (1916) takes a very dim view of the prospects for economic development in Confucian China, whose culture, he remarks at one point, provides only slightly less of an obstacle to the emergence of modern capitalism than Japan's.

What held traditional China and Japan back, we now understand, was not culture, but stifling institutions, bad politics and misguided policies. Once these were fixed, both societies took off. Culture is only one of many factors that determine the success of a society. This is something to bear in mind when one hears assertions that the religion of Islam explains terrorism, the lack of democracy or other phenomena in the Middle East.

At the same time, no one can deny the importance of religion and culture in determining why institutions work better in some countries than in others. The Catholic parts of Europe were slower to modernize economically than the Protestant ones, and they took longer to reconcile themselves to democracy. Thus, much of what Samuel Huntington called the ''third wave'' of democratization took place between the 1970's and 90's in places like Spain, Portugal and many countries of Latin America. Even today, among the highly secular societies that make up the European Union, there is a clear gradient in attitudes toward political corruption from the Protestant north to the Mediterranean south. It was the entry of the squeaky-clean Scandinavians into the union that ultimately forced the resignation of its entire executive leadership in 1999 over a minor corruption scandal involving a former French prime minister.

''The Protestant Ethic'' raises much more profound questions about the role of religion in modern life than most discussions suggest. Weber argues that in the modern world, the work ethic has become detached from the religious passions that gave birth to it, and that it now is part of rational, science-based capitalism. Values for Weber do not arise rationally, but out of the kind of human creativity that originally inspired the great world religions. Their ultimate source, he believed, lay in what he labeled ''charismatic authority'' -- in the original Greek meaning of ''touched by God.'' The modern world, he said, has seen this type of authority give way to a bureaucratic-rational form that deadens the human spirit (producing what he called an ''iron cage'') even as it has made the world peaceful and prosperous. Modernity is still haunted by ''the ghost of dead religious beliefs,'' but has largely been emptied of authentic spirituality. This was especially true, Weber believed, in the United States, where ''the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely mundane passions.''

It is worth looking more closely at how Weber's vision of the modern world has panned out in the century since the publication of ''The Protestant Ethic.'' In many ways, of course, it has proved fatally accurate: rational, science-based capitalism has spread across the globe, bringing material advancement to large parts of the world and welding it together into the iron cage we now call globalization.

But it goes without saying that religion and religious passion are not dead, and not only because of Islamic militancy but also because of the global Protestant-evangelical upsurge that, in terms of sheer numbers, rivals fundamentalist Islam as a source of authentic religiosity. The revival of Hinduism among middle-class Indians, or the emergence of the Falun Gong movement in China, or the resurgence of Eastern Orthodoxy in Russia and other former Communist lands, or the continuing vibrancy of religion in America, suggests that secularization and rationalism are hardly the inevitable handmaidens of modernization.

One might even take a broader view of what constitutes religion and charismatic authority. The past century was marked by what the German theorist Carl Schmitt labeled ''political-theological'' movements, like Nazism and Marxism-Leninism, that were based on passionate commitments to ultimately irrational beliefs. Marxism claimed to be scientific, but its real-world adherents followed leaders like Lenin, Stalin or Mao with the kind of blind commitment to authority that is psychologically indistinguishable from religious passion. (During the Cultural Revolution in China, a person had to be careful about what he did with old newspapers; if a paper contained a picture of Mao and one sat on the holy image or used the newspaper to wrap a fish, one was in danger of being named a counterrevolutionary.)

SURPRISINGLY, the Weberian vision of a modernity characterized by ''specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart'' applies much more to modern Europe than to present-day America. Europe today is a continent that is peaceful, prosperous, rationally administered by the European Union and thoroughly secular. Europeans may continue to use terms like ''human rights'' and ''human dignity,'' which are rooted in the Christian values of their civilization, but few of them could give a coherent account of why they continue to believe in such things. The ghost of dead religious beliefs haunts Europe much more than it does America.

Weber's ''Protestant Ethic'' was thus terrifically successful as a stimulus to serious thought about the relationship of cultural values to modernity. But as a historical account of the rise of modern capitalism, or as an exercise in social prediction, it has turned out to be less correct. The violent century that followed publication of his book did not lack for charismatic authority, and the century to come threatens yet more of the same. One must wonder whether it was not Weber's nostalgia for spiritual authenticity -- what one might term his Nietzscheanism -- that was misplaced, and whether living in the iron cage of modern rationalism is such a terrible thing after all.

Francis Fukuyama is a professor of international political economy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the author, most recently, of ''State-Building.''

I agreed with most of it, but something just isn't computing at the end.

Is he praising the EU for their secularism then asks whether or not they are right by saying "whether living in the iron cage of modern rationalism is such a terrible thing after all." I wouldn't think so considering he makes mention that humanism is essentially past "Christian values of their civilization." And how would you compare the European work ethic to the American one? Seriously, WTF is he trying to say in his conclusion?

Thanks for confirming my suspicion. I am sure this essay serves some purpose, even if only to highlight my lack of intellectual capacity to know if this should mean something to me. I mean what if this is the one piece of information that would complete the circuit and send me to higher nirvana enlightened state where I might think "deep thoughts" just like the straw man on the wizard of Oz? Oh well . . . burp . I'll just carry on . . somehow.

Calvinism reintroduced the idea of "vocation." That all men have a calling from God that is sacred. Hence, work, even the most mundane, was transformed into a thing that could glorify God. This revolutionary rethinking of work unleashed innate industry and the attendant virtues of thrift, stewardship and philanthropy. In that sense, Calvinism and Protestantism transformed the economies of Europe.

Protestantism admonished its believers to behave morally outside the boundaries of the family, which was crucial in creating a system of social trust.

Have you ever contemplated the architecture in lands not in the prosperous west where the rule of law has not obtained for generations? In those lands of poverty and squalid streets the living structures are designed to wall off the street from the inner court yard of the extended family and to protect the family from the barbarism without. The street is treacherous and violent, a place of warfare and betrayal.

The ultimate expression of such tribalism is Fallujah and murderous rule of a whole country by Saddam's extended family. Without morality in the streets there can be not rule of law as opposed to corruption and therefore no preconditions for prosperity on a scale larger than the family or its extension, the tribe.

Alas, as we move away from the Protestant ethic in America, we too have had to resort to walling off the street with gated communities and brownstone doormen. All in all a grim prospect the remedy for which is not liberal legislation defining the height or set back requirements for our walls whether of mortar or of prejudice, but a return to Protestant virtues - which come not from lamentations over the state of public immorality or from exhortations to behave morally, but from a waxing of the faith.

Yes, election is born out in good works. And the Calvinist also works hard because work is good in and of itself. It is an act of worship in itself. It is probably a more effective witness, moreover, than wasting company time telling coworkers about Jesus - which in itself is a sin against the 8th commandment. There's a time and place for verbal witnessing, of course, but so many misunderstand the Gospel and sotoriology that actions often get lost in the shuffle.

Work alone cannot show ones elect status, as you correctly surmise: Pagans, by the common grace of God, will find things in Creation that are good, true, and useful. That's common grace.

Yes you are.

(sigh).

Some people are joyful in their vocations, and I know you're joyful for them. Others are called to suffering. Remember the Sacred Heart: was there ever a man more elect, who suffered more from rejection? Different people experience different forms of rejection. If there's a mystery in your election (and there is), don't regret it for that reason.

Well that's certainly timely, the catering biz foray having already run its course, looks like. (Schwew ... I can have my life back! I guess it pays to be careful what you wish for.)

I had a feeling Mary Poppins wouldn't stay put through the winds of March. Though she's got a grip on the servant mentality, studied obsequiousness does not appear to be her carpet bag.

At least I've got the jones for cab-driving out of my system for good.

The written word of God is simply a 'cook book' that produces
results equal in power to any other cook book...Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, The Koran, according to this prof and Max Weber...

I much prefer Weber to other social constructionists..

But even Jesus warned against having what He called 'A form of religiosity that denied the the power of God'

It is a changed heart...from the outside..a pure spirit from without..one of unlimited power and grace and righteousness Only..that can clean up one whose very nature and will is toward evil and every manner of moral turpitude...this is the true state of mankind- Total Depravity

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