The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

But it was, as we have seen, especially in social reform that Germany was believed to be leading the way, and to have found the secret of dealing with the economic evil. In the case of Insurance, which was the test case she was applauded for obliging all her workmen to set apart a portion of their wages for any time of sickness; and numerous other

should be economists and statesmen, and that all economists and statesmen should be Christians, and that their whole efforts in politics and economics should be directed to putting ‘Do as you would be done by’ into action. If that happened, and if we others were really ready to take it, then we should find the Christian solution for our own social

Missionaries believed their message of earthly increase and heavenly salvation would inevitably replace such empty performing: after all, to its believers, Christian industriousness seemed universally true and transparently desirable. Who did not want more goods and more good life after death?

The spread of Christianity echoed the principles of the Subject, putting forth the ultimate Father, the almighty God in whose great hands lay the fate of all His people, the shepherd to us as flock. Under Him came another father-figure in the form of the Pope, under whom came widely distributed Fathers of local churches. A veritable Russian doll of