anyone and everyone of merit with be lifted to their rightful station in society.
I think that’s part of the protestant work ethic. People are predestined to a level of holiness in the material world we live in, and their predestined level of holiness grants them the ability to produce a quality and quantity of work that achieves their said level of predestined holiness. Thus, the wealthier a person is, the more holy they were predestined to be (sounds like a loophole in predestination to me). If you look at religion from a sociological lens, then the protestant work ethic is a great leadership tool to encourage the workers to produce as much as possible for several reasons: it creates a belief in social mobility that is based on work, workers are teased with being more holy if they worker, workers are threatened with being less holy if they work less hard, and leaders and wealthy individuals are seen as being the more holy. This was a revolution in Christian values at the time of the Protestant Reformation because it made wealthy people more holy, which was in contradiction to Christian dogma at the time. Roman Catholics, who were dominant before the Protestant Reformation, valued only actions directly related to the church, and anything else was irrelevant. I’m not an expert on this, so I may be wrong, but I think part of predestination to Roman Catholics was applied at the creation of a person because by being human, they were already predestined by God to be a certain level of divine. In essence, what mattered in terms of holiness were works for the church. Labor was less motivated to produce goods for the sake of creating wealth. The impact was that Roman Catholicism was a better match for a feudalistic society in which works contributed to their lord and church. Whereas, Protestant Christianity was better suited for a market economy in which individuals were encouraged to produce for the sake of becoming wealthy (ie holy). Therefore, Protestant Christianity took hold well in the developing United States of America as had a synergistic relationship with the economic model, which we continually see portrayed in media as the American Dream and that wealthy individuals are morally just and given unlimited get out of jail free cards (unless they betray other wealthy individuals).
I think that’s part of the protestant work ethic. People are predestined to a level of holiness in the material world we live in, and their predestined level of holiness grants them the ability to produce a quality and quantity of work that achieves their said level of predestined holiness. Thus, the wealthier a person is, the more holy they were predestined to be (sounds like a loophole in predestination to me). If you look at religion from a sociological lens, then the protestant work ethic is a great leadership tool to encourage the workers to produce as much as possible for several reasons: it creates a belief in social mobility that is based on work, workers are teased with being more holy if they worker, workers are threatened with being less holy if they work less hard, and leaders and wealthy individuals are seen as being the more holy. This was a revolution in Christian values at the time of the Protestant Reformation because it made wealthy people more holy, which was in contradiction to Christian dogma at the time. Roman Catholics, who were dominant before the Protestant Reformation, valued only actions directly related to the church, and anything else was irrelevant. I’m not an expert on this, so I may be wrong, but I think part of predestination to Roman Catholics was applied at the creation of a person because by being human, they were already predestined by God to be a certain level of divine. In essence, what mattered in terms of holiness were works for the church. Labor was less motivated to produce goods for the sake of creating wealth. The impact was that Roman Catholicism was a better match for a feudalistic society in which works contributed to their lord and church. Whereas, Protestant Christianity was better suited for a market economy in which individuals were encouraged to produce for the sake of becoming wealthy (ie holy). Therefore, Protestant Christianity took hold well in the developing United States of America as had a synergistic relationship with the economic model, which we continually see portrayed in media as the American Dream and that wealthy individuals are morally just and given unlimited get out of jail free cards (unless they betray other wealthy individuals).