Whatever Happened to the Protestant Ethic?

March 28, 1965
Rochester

Whatever Happened to the Protestant Ethic?

One of the most powerful ideas in our Western civilization has been the "Protestant Ethic." Because I believe that the "Protestant Ethic" is something like a desert mirage to parched travelers — they think it's there, but it isn't — I would like to review the "Protestant Ethic," argue that it is no longer potent; and attempt to interpret its successor.

A brief survey of contrasting emphases in some religions may help to outline the idea of the "Protestant Ethic."

Consider the Brahmanic religion of India, one of the most ancient and powerful of the Hindu religions. On the whole, this is a pessimistic religion, deploring the miseries of this world and seeking extinction of personality. For ages there has been a rigid emphasis on caste. In the thousands of caste relationships, the lines are drawn by birth. Until most recently there has been almost no opportunity to advance economically or socially beyond one's caste. At least in part as a result, the culture has been static from an economic and social point of view.

Although Buddhism has not enforced a caste system, it is a religion with main motifs of pessimism and asceticism. Buddhism historically has been unconcerned with the acquisition of wealth or with personal achievement in our "success" sense of the word.

Or consider the principal religion of historic China – Confucianism. For thousands of years, until 1911, when the Sun Yat Sen revolution changed the cultural current, Confucianism stressed ancestor worship and reverence for parents. Filial piety was the main obligation. Culturally this conservative religion can be held somewhat responsible for an absence of progressive economic change and advancement.

When one considers "Christian beginnings," one discovers strong ascetic influences. The early Christians were not greatly concerned with this world. To be rich was not a virtue. The rich man faced trouble. His task of getting to heaven was like unto getting through the eye of a needle.

As the medieval church developed, there were many changes in religious culture, but the "other-worldly" emphasis remained dominant.

Then the Protestant movement was a great, fresh draft that fanned smoldering rebellions into great flames of Reformation and change.

Martin Luther emphasized the "priesthood of all believers," the "liberty of the Christian Man," and asserted that to acquire and preserve property was a good way to serve the Lord.

John Calvin, who ranks with Luther as the most important Reformation figure was even more explicit in a justification of economic individualism and he was a more influential force in a developing trend toward greatly increased and church sanctioned individual economic activity. The charging of Interest, hitherto frowned upon, was approved. Furthermore, Calvinism furthered the doctrine not only was the ministry a "calling," but also all occupations were "callings" of God. When this was related to Luther's "priesthood of all believers," it can be readily seen that in contrast with New Testament days, worldly success became not only respectable, but greatly to be desired.

This attitude was intensified by a singularly materialistic application of the theological doctrine of the "elect." This Calvinistic doctrine held that God had fore-ordained from the beginning of the world that a few persons would be saved and their eternal home would be heaven. These were the "elect." The rest of humanity were fore-ordained, willy-nilly, to eternal punishment in Hell. If you were elected to Heaven, you couldn't do anything to change your destination. If you were destined for damnation, there was nothing you could do about that either.

Now while no one could really be sure if he were among the "elect" or the damned, it was believed that material prosperity was one of the good clues that one was among the "elect." Thus thrift, unceasing hard work and affluence comprised a rather good indication that heaven was one's destination.

This libertarian attitude and doctrinal rationale for economic acquisition had corollary ideas which were in conflict with the Roman Catholic Church. The people who lived in the rapidly-growing cities who were beginning to emerge as a new social group – the middle-class or the bourgeois – found their surging individualistic aspirations hostile to the long-standing taxation system levied by Rome for Vatican purposes; the new middle class resented the wealth of the Church and the luxurious life of bishops and other high church dignitaries.

Along with other social forces, put these trends and feelings all together, and add notable individuals – Luther, Calvin, Zwingli – who were brilliant of mind, superior in courage and possessed that rare competence we call organizing ability. Put together, there is the Protestant Reformation, or at least its mainstream (I have spoken to you before of the Left Wing of the Reformation.)

The "Protestant Ethic," then is the belief that the individual has a clear right, granted by God to be free to acquire as much wealth as he can, if his life is rigidly moral (in the Puritanical sense), hard-working, thrifty and prudential. Those who succeed are likely to be among the "saved." The poor and wretched are probably doomed anyway.

Therefore, there was an approved wide-scale indifference to the awful living conditions of the poor and oppressed. Our opening hymn is one of the great Reformation hymns, but the words to the 1st verse illustrate the prevailing idea – "The Lord in his righteousness judgeth the people." If you are affluent, you have been judged worthy; if you are wretched, then your eternal fate has been indicated also.

This is an oversimplified explanation. Many scholars have argued that the emerging Middle Class was a greater influence on the Reformation religions than Calvinism was upon the Middle Class and to argue for the "Protestant Ethic" is to mistake effect for cause. Others dispute the theory on other grounds. Those who wish to pursue the merit of the theory may seek out the writings of Max Weber, the sociologist who structured the theory of the "Protestant Ethic,." There have been famous commentaries, including, RELIGION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM, by R. H. Tawney, THE SOCIAL TEACHINGS OF THE CHURCH by Ernst Troelsch; and THE SOCIAL SOURCES OF DENOMINATIONALISM, by H. Richard Niehbur.

I am more concerned today to point out the influence of the Protestant Ethic in our nation, particularly in the 19th century, when, combined with the opportunities of the rich frontier, this nation's increase in wealth was spectacular. We had a singularly impressive example of how the Reformation principle of the freedom of the individual conscience was used as the authority for justification for a rampant economic individualism on laissez-faire principles – "let me alone; I'll let you alone!"

As Dr. Milton Yinger points out in his book, RELIGION, SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL, (p. 218) "...by the latter half of the nineteenth century there was scarcely a doubt in the established Protestant churches that the "gilded age" was solving most of man's problems, that the economic theories of the middle and upper classes were religiously valid — and that those who opposed the prevailing distribution of power and wealth, therefore were anti-Christian."

In the 1880's, a familiar college text was, "CHRISTIAN ETHICS, and in it is this proposal :
"By the proper use of wealth man may greatly elevate and extend his moral work. It is therefore his duty to seek to secure wealth for this high end, and to make a diligent use of what the Moral Governor may bestow upon him for the same end,. .The Moral Governor has placed the power of acquisitiveness in man for a good and noble purpose." (Yinger, p.218)

About the same time, Episcopal Bishop Lawrence of Massachusetts said, "In the long run it is only to the man of morality that wealth comes. We believe in the harmony of God's universe. We know that it is only by working along his laws, natural and spiritual, that we can work with efficiency. Godliness is in league with riches... Material prosperity is helping to make the national character sweeter, more joyous, more unselfish, more Christlike. That is my answer to the question as to the relation of material prosperity to morality." (Yinger, 218,219)

Henry Ward Beecher, the most famous preacher of his day, bitterly condemned the workingmen who used the strike to secure better conditions for themselves and this is a quotation, "It is said that a dollar a day is not enough for a wife and five or six children. No, not if the man smokes or drinks beer. It is not enough if they are to live as he would be glad to have them live. It is not enough to enable them to live as perhaps they would have a right to live in prosperous times. But is not a dollar a day enough to buy bread with? Water costs nothing; and a man who can not live on bread is not fit to live. What is the use of civilization that simply makes men incompetent to live under the conditions which exist...."

In the 19th Century under the influence of this so-called "Protestant Ethic," the churches for the most part were bitterly opposed to social legislation of any kind including child labor laws, laws to limit hours of women who worked, as well as men, and gave no sanction to the workingmen who wanted to band together to strike.

The sociologist quotes a few statistics which are their own clear commentary. "Between 1860 and 1890, national wealth in the U,S. increased by almost 500%, but the increase was not universally shared. In the decade of the seventies, real wages which had already been at the subsistence level, declined from an average of $400 to $300." (Yinger p.220) Although strikes were bitterly and harshly suppressed, between 1881 and 1894, there were fourteen thousand strikes involving four million workers. ,

In the 20th century there have been so many changes that the question can be raised if the "Protestant Ethic" still exists. For years I have been on the mailing list for a paper called "Christian Economics" which every week rings the changes on the need to restore economic libertarianism. From the first issue I have ever received, I have discounted their claims and cries of alarm, because it seems to me that the only Christian right they support is the right to make money irrespective of any restrictions which might be needed for the good of society. In political campaigns usually there is one party viewing with alarm all the "socialistic" practices and federal taxation which have made it a bit rough for an individual to accumulate millions. But in actual practice, this "let me alone so I can get rich" has been an abandoned ideology for almost the whole of this century, even though it is still a battle cry for economic individualists.

What Max Weber called the "Protestant Ethic," was never completely valid in theory or practice and is now only a relic as far as relevance, usefulness and truth are concerned. No matter what people are saying, in practice we know that other rights are more highly valued than economic libertarianism and if this had not been so, the world would have been an utterly impossible chaos. You can supply a long list, from child-labor laws to social security, of legislation which essentially says, this nation does not place individualist economic freedom as the highest value. In particular, the current struggle for equal opportunity in voting, education, and all the rest illustrate a different ethic. Of greater importance still, those who have been deprived of the full catalogue of rights are being helped to be free and equal rather than being the objects of the charity of the "elect." No matter how kindly motivated, charity or "love," without justice is a peculiarly repulsive perversion of an enduring religious value.

The Protestant Ethic has been abandoned as far as representing clues to eternal life. Whatever may be asserted in theological creed and propositions about eternal existence after death,in practice, life is no longer considered an inevitable and unending period of hard work as preparation for the future life. People behave as though they believed this world to be a place where we can secure the benefits of the good life; where we can appreciate beauty, demonstrate goodness and search for truth – here and now, not then and later.

Furthermore, whatever may be said about determinism, pre-destination, fatalism, in actual practice we assume that an individual's destiny is not fore-ordained from birth, but can be changed by improving the conditions under which he lives. If people did not believe this, if they did not believe that changed conditions will change people's opportunity, there would be no civil rights struggle, no peace efforts, no anti-poverty program and countless other specific programs designed to change conditions. We no longer acquiesce in the theological notion that it is God's will that the White middle and upper classes are elected to be saved and the rest of the human family doomed to damnation. And high time too.

The Horatio Alger hero no longer exists, if he ever did, who goes from rags to riches by shining the boots of a convenient millionaire. Today's young heroes are in the Peace Corps, Civil Rights Action Groups, Research, or like activities, where they are dedicated to the proposition that people's lives can be enriched by knowledge and improved surroundings. In the case of the Peace Corps, one of the attractions for young idealists is the incredibly low wage and laboriously long hours, with no opportunity whatsoever to become another Vanderbilt or Carnegie.

With the churches supporting the freedom movement and other progressive causes, there has been a turnabout. The story of the Social Gospel is a fascinating and instructive account of a changing emphasis in American organized religion. The prevailing religious ethic is that religious morality is operating where social change is being influenced. No longer is there a presupposition that unrestrained economic competition is in tune with any respectable religious dogma. No longer is there a presupposition that one's condition, favored or unfavored, is the will of God. Even though it is seldom stated explicitly, most religious and other institutions that act on the basis of moral values, presuppose the priority of human individual worth and proceed on the conviction that peaceful group action is more moral than unchecked individual economic libertarianism.

But the affirmations of faith do not always keep up with practice. Dr. Phil Giles, former Gen. Supt. of the UCA and now executive director of the Jos. Priestly UU District helped me see this happening in our own faith. A century ago, on the national level, there was the Universalist General Reform Association, with most churches having local Reform Associations with, specific service tasks. He recalled the minutes of the Concord, N. H. church about 1850 and how the Reform Association of that Church had the responsibility of the care of the persons at Town Poor Farm. On the basis of the many actual experiences over the years of the Reform Associations, in 1933, when a new affirmation of faith was adopted, a new statement included, "we avow our faith in the supreme worth of every human personality," It was many years of experience that produced the declaration.

The old Protestant Ethic of unrestrained economic acquisition is a doctrine of the past, long since abandoned – and a good thing too. It seems obvious to me that the prevailing ethic (and it is not "Protestant," but Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish, UU, Secular, agnostic, atheist) – is a "human" ethic which avows that we can help members of the human family to achieve their own best selves by improving the conditions under which they live and creating a platform of equal opportunity on which all persons may stand.

There is a new ferment of experience seething in the churches. You can detect this ferment in the uniting of once hostile faiths in achieving unity in confronting social wrong. I do not believe the obvious effects of this yeasty movement are much more than ten years old. The unmistakable evidence that something radically different was happening appeared in the Summer of '63 in the Washington March. It can be seen in the determination to apply peaceful political pressure to achieve legislative reform. Selma and Montgomery confirm the unmistakable development that the religions are uniting efforts in social ethics.

I believe this unusual, cooperative, concerted action by the entire spectrum of faiths to achieve common human goals will spread beyond the Civil Rights movement. My prediction and hope is that the next great united effort will be to throw united weight on the side of peace in the most threatening, precarious balance of the ages.

But the words to fit this movement may not appear for years. The "Ecumenical Movement" does not sufficiently describe, for this ferment of social action reaches beyond Christianity, gathering in Jewish, secular and agnostic movements as well as all manner of varieties of each.

But in this new awareness of issues, a sensitivity not yet fully articulated in words, I have a feeling Carl Sandburg expressed it best for me in "The People, Yes."

"The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on,
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.

"The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic, is a vast huddle
with many units saying:
'I earn my living.
I make enough to get by
and it takes all my time.
If I had more time
I could do more for myself
and maybe for others.
I could read and study
and talk things over
and find out about things.
It takes time.
I wish I had the time. '

'The people is a tragic and comic two-face:
hero and hoodlum: phantom and gorilla twisting to
moan with a gargoyle mouth: "They buy me and
sell me. . . . it's a game ....
sometime I'll break loose . . . '

'Once having marched
Over the margins of animal necessity,
Over the grim line of sheer subsistence
Then man came
To the deeper rituals of his bones,
To, the lights lighter than any bones,
To the time for thinking things over,
To the dance, the song, the story,
Or the hours given over to dreaming,
Once having so marched.

'Between the finite limitations of the five senses and the endless
yearnings of man for the beyond the people hold to the humdrum
bidding of work and food while reaching out when it comes their way
for lights beyond the prism of the five senses,
for keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death.
This reaching is alive.
The panderers and liars have violated and smutted it.
Yet this reaching is alive yet
for lights and keepsakes.

"The people know the salt of the sea
and the strength of the winds
lashing the corners of the earth.
The people take the earth
as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
Who else speaks for the Family of Man?
They are in tune and step
with constellations of universal law.

"The people is a polychrome,
a spectrum and a prism
held in a moving monolith,
a console organ of changing themes,
a clavilux of color poems
wherein the sea offers fog
and the fog moves off in rain
and the labrador sunset shortens
to a nocture of clear stars
serene over the shot spray
of northern lights.

"The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:

"This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can't be bought.
The fireborn are at hone in fire.
The stars make no noise.
You can't hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?

"In the darkness with great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for
keeps, the people march:

'Where to? what next?