3 - Max Weber, Protestantism, and the Debate around 1900

Summary

Weber began his essay on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism with the assurance that it was the conventional opinion of his contemporaries that there was a close connection between religion and society. They especially believed that the differences between Protestants and Catholics had a strong impact on social structure and social status; in a society composed of mixed religions, the higher strata, the more advanced and more modern elements, were definitely more Protestant than Catholic: scholars, business leaders, white-collar employees, even skilled workers. The burden of proof was not with those who held this assumption but with those who would deny it.

The modern reader normally will skim over these paragraphs in Weber's essay, but Weber himself did not pretend that his selection of this problem was in any respect an original one. He quoted some literature of rather varying character and quality - Bendix went through some of this stuff - and relied heavily upon a doctoral dissertation of one of his students, Martin Offenbacher, on the state of Baden, religious affiliation, and social stratification; in fact Weber chose this as the title of his own first chapter.

I leave aside the British authors, such as Henry Thomas Buckle, Matthew Arnold, and various economists, who pointed to the connection between the beliefs of the Puritans, their habits, their asceticism and spiritual discipline, and their work ethics, especially because these authors often were making observations, as the English like to do, about the Scots. I concentrate my comments on the German discussion, and I pick up four points.