I have long heard about the Protestant Work Ethic and applied the term as a generalization about evangelical Christians, including myself, who are hard-working but who carry a little bit of a guilt complex against ever becoming too lazy \u201cbecause God created us to thrive and make the best use of our gifs for His purposes.\u201d \u00a0But that\u2019s honestly about as far as my grasp of the concept went.<\/p>\n
Though I am a protestant, as I engaged with Max Weber\u2019s The Protestant Ethic and the \u201cSpirit\u201d of Capitalism<\/em>, I had a difficult time locating myself in its thesis for two reasons. First, it was, admittedly, a dense, complex, challenging book to synthesize. To simplify and clarify, the following is, in my own words, how I understood the concept of the Protestant Work Ethic as Weber presents it:<\/p>\n The Calvinist theology of predestination induced a crisis of assurance. If only the elect were to be saved\u2014and a person could not easily determine if they were a part of the elect\u2014then assurance of salvation was a problem. Because a person\u2019s work was equal to their calling, then how well someone did their work, and how well their work produced wealth, might then be a sign of their salvation, to both themselves, and to others. But because conspicuous consumption was a clear reflection of sins such as pride, greed, gluttony, etc., those protestants who created wealth did not use it for themselves (or give it to the poor, as that would have encouraged the sin of sloth). Unused wealth, therefore, compounded, creating massive capital that would be reinvested and exponentially grow.<\/p>\n But the real reason I had a hard time finding myself in Weber\u2019s book was that its concepts didn\u2019t resonate with my personal protestant-religious experience. Because I’m not a Calvinist I have little doubt about my assurance of salvation, and consumption isn\u2019t a theological problem for me as long as I’m honoring God with my resources and choices.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t until I read Jason Clark\u2019s chapter on \u201cAssurance, Anxiety and the Protestant Work Ethic\u201d <\/em>that I realized my life approach to work and wealth could be found connected to, but modified from, Weber\u2019s framework. Clark points out that \u201cMacKinnon, in his rebuttal of Weber\u2019s thesis, suggests that it was the issue of \u201cprovidence\u201d that replaced \u201cpredestination\u201d as an explanatory ethos for Protestant ascetics.\u201d (Clark, 94)<\/p>\n In layman\u2019s terms, the protestant work ethic morphed; no longer was working hard and producing wealth a sign that a person was saved, but wealth was a sign that God was blessing you.<\/p>\n My religious history fit squarely into that camp. Here is an example:<\/p>\n On a shelf in my library is a short book written by my great-great grandfather the same year Weber\u2019s book was first published: \u201cEvery Man a Tither: How to be Healthy, Wealthy and Wise<\/em>.\u201d In this book he pushes every button imaginable to get people to tithe, including explaining that a lack of the practice is often why people\u2019s prayers go unanswered, and that embracing tithing, and receiving the blessing that comes with it, is a sure sign that you are doing well before God.<\/p>\n So, though I grew up in a branch of Protestantism that is as theologically\u2014and as stylistically\u2014far away from Calvinism as one can imagine, the idea of material wealth as a sign of blessing was never far from our minds. Sure, it was mitigated by warnings against making money an idol, and honoring God with your wealth (thus, tithing) but we all had a sense that if you \u201cpulled the right levers\u201d with God, there should be some resultant blessing (if not financial then physical, relational, or emotional).<\/p>\n Recognizing this theological fallacy and rooting out inherited assumptions was a significant part of my formation as a pastor. I have had to recognize my bent towards seeing victory and provision as a sign of God\u2019s pleasure with me and the people I serve, and I have had to learn to embrace and teach the way of the cross and reality of suffering as part of God\u2019s Kingdom.<\/p>\n I still work hard, I still want to produce and multiply and consume and give-away wealth, and I still encourage the people I lead to grow in their gifts, and make their best contribution, and lean into God\u2019s abundant life. But all that is tempered with the reality that sometimes, in the Kingdom, the way \u201cup\u201d is \u201cdown\u201d, the way \u201cin\u201d is \u201cout\u201d and to keep your soul, sometimes you must lose the world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have long heard about the Protestant Work Ethic and applied the term as a generalization about evangelical Christians, including myself, who are hard-working but who carry a little bit of a guilt complex against ever becoming too lazy \u201cbecause God created us to thrive and make the best use of our gifs for His […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":169,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2489,467,11],"class_list":["post-33452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp02","tag-clark","tag-weber","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33452"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33456,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33452\/revisions\/33456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}