The Globalization and Development Reader: Perspectives on Development and Global Change, 2nd Edition

2 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905)

Max Weber

[…]

In order to understand the connection between the fundamental religious ideas of ascetic Protestantism and its maxims for everyday economic conduct, it is necessary to examine with especial care such writings as have evidently been derived from ministerial practice. For in a time in which the beyond meant everything, when the social position of the Christian depended upon his admission to the communion, the clergyman, through his ministry, Church discipline, and preaching, exercised an influence … which we modern men are entirely unable to picture. In such a time the religious forces which express themselves through such channels are the decisive influences in the formation of national character.

For [present] purposes we can treat ascetic Protestantism as a single whole. But since that side of English Puritanism which was derived from Calvinism gives the most consistent religious basis for the idea of the calling, we shall place one of its representatives at the centre of the discussion. Richard Baxter stands out above many other writers on Puritan ethics… .

Now, in glancing at Baxter’s Saints’ Everlasting Rest, or his Christian Directory, or similar works of others, one is struck at first glance by the emphasis placed, in the discussion of wealth and its acquisition, on the ebionitic elements of the New Testament. Wealth as such is a great danger; its temptations never end, and its pursuit is not ...