Dating
the Bible
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The
Bible is
a compilation of various texts or "books" of different ages. While
the books of the New
Testament may be dated with some confidence, the dates of many of the
texts of the Hebrew
Bible are difficult to establish. Textual criticism places all of them
within the 1st
millennium BC[citation
needed], while traditionalist schools assign the Pentateuch
a 15th
century BC to 13th
century BC date.
With
the exception an extensive manscripts and fragments (found among the Dead
Sea scrolls, discussed below), no Old Testament manuscript predates the 2nd
century BC. The earliest manuscript of the New Testament is the Rylands
Library Papyrus P52, a manscript fragments of the Gospel of John dated to
the first half of the 2nd century. The Chester
Beatty Papyri P46,
which contains most of the Pauline epistles, the Magdalen
papyrus P64/67, and the Bodmer
Papyri P66
are other noted early manusript, dated c. 200, over a century after the
New Testament books were most likely composed. For this reason, dating of the
older texts cannot be done directly by dating manuscripts, but relies on textual
criticism, philological and linguistic evidence, as well as direct
references to historical events in the texts.
[edit]
The Hebrew Bible
The
authorship of the Hebrew
Bible is an open topic of research, and who and how many people
contributed to the text is a vital and lively area of investigation.
Therefore, assigning solid dates to any of the texts is difficult. Since the
dating of the authorship of these books depends on the particulars of textual
deconstruction, the range of dates assigned to the first five books is rather
broad, ranging from the 10th
to the 6th
centuries BC.
As
in the case of the Rigveda
or the Iliad,
it is difficult to date orally transmitted texts, since they are not in a
fixed form. Individual portions may well predate the entire text by several
centuries. The oldest known materially preserved fragment of a Torah text is a
good luck charm, inscribed with Num 6:24–27, and dated to approximately 600
BC (Dever, p. 180). Though whole copies of the Bible were not found at Qumran,
the documents of the Dead
Sea scrolls contained versions of many books of the Hebrew Bible. The
Scrolls have been dated from the 3rd
century BC to 68
AD. It is largely undisputed that the text of the Torah had become fixed by 400
BC.
In
terms of the dating of complete authoritative texts, there are three main
versions of the Hebrew Bible. There is the Masoretic text of the Torah,
thought to have been first assembled in the 4th
century AD. The oldest known copy (the oldest is the Aleppo
Codex; the oldest complete text is the Leningrad
Codex) now dates to the tenth century AD. There is the Septuagint, which
is a Greek translation of the Torah, made under Ptolemy in the 3rd
century BC. The oldest copy of the Septuagint is centuries older than the
oldest complete Masoretic text, and fragments of the Septuagint date to the 2nd
century BC. There is also the Samaritan Torah, which emerged after the
Assyrian occupation of the northern kingdom of Israel. The Peshitta, a
translation of the Christian Bible into Syriac, a variant of Aramaic, can be
useful in determining authenticity of passages and hence help establish dates.
The earliest known copy of the Peshitta dates to the 2nd century.
One
way to date an ancient text is to examine the text for places or events that
were known to the author. If, for example, the text refers to a town or
village that did not exist until the 3rd
century BC, then that can be used as a reference to pin down the
approximate date of authorship. Also used can be the style of writing and
common facts known at a particular place and time. Loanwords from other
languages can be important, as the period of contact between different
cultures creates watermarks in time that allow for dating.
Documents,
inscriptions, and objects that have portions of the Torah, or the whole of the
text, allow researchers to place an upper bound on the date of a particular
portion of text, or perhaps even the whole of it. If the portion of text is
small, it can be argued that it simply is part of an oral tradition; for that
reason whole books or substantially whole books are proportionately more
meaningful in determining when the whole of the Bible was written. Also useful
are documents, inscriptions, and objects that speak of the Hebrew Bible, or
portions thereof, or of people, places and events that are in common with
Biblical narrative.
Some
critical scholars (the 'Biblical
Minimalists") insist that the whole of the Torah
shows evidence of its construction composed after 538
BC, perhaps with material from an earlier oral tradition, as it were a
"prequel"
to the prophetic
books.
A
middle ground is held by people such as Israel
Finkelstein, whose archeological studies tend to suggest that a
substantial portion of the Pentateuch is a 7th
century BC construction, designed to promote the dynastic ambitions of
King Josiah
of Judah. The 6th
century BC Books
of Kings tells of the rediscovery of an old book by King Josiah, which
would be the oldest part of the Torah, around which Josiah's scribes would
have fabricated the remaining text:
And
Hilkiah the
high priest said unto Shaphan
the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the LORD. And
Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it. (2 Kings 22:8 KJV)
Under
Josiah's rule there would then for the first time have been a unified and
centralized state of Judah around the worship of Yahweh based at the Temple in
Jerusalem, portraying King Josiah as the legitimate successor to the legendary
David and thus the rightful ruler of Judah. According to this interpretation,
neighboring countries that kept many written records, such as Egypt,
Persia,
etc., have no writings about the stories of the Bible or its main characters
before 650 BC,
and the archaeological record of pre-Josiac Israel does not support the
existence of a unified state in the time of David. Such claims are detailed in
Who Were the Early Israelites? by William
G. Dever (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 2003).
Another such book is The Bible Unearthed by Neil
A. Silberman and Israel
Finkelstein (Simon and Schuster, New York, 2001).
A
traditional strain of scholarship (the "Biblical
maximalists") would assign portions of the Pentateuch (generally, the
J author)
to the period of the United Monarchy in the 10th
century BC, would date Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic
history to the time of King Josiah, and that the final form of the Torah
was due to a redactor in exilic or postexilic times (6th century BC). This
view is based on the account of the finding of the "book of law" in
2 Kings 22:8, which would correspond to the core of Deuteronomy, and the
remaining parts of the Torah would have been composed to supply a background
from traditional accounts to the rediscovered text.
[edit]
Nevi'im
The
major Nevi'im
("Prophets").
The
Books
of Kings mentions the following sources:
- The
"book of the acts of Solomon" (1 Kings 11:41)
- The
"book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah" (14:29; 15:7, 23,
etc.)
- The
"book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel" (14:19; 15:31;
16:14, 20, 27, etc.).
The
date of its composition was perhaps some time between 561
BC, the date of the last chapter (2 Kings 25), when Jehoiachin
was released from captivity by Evil-merodach,
and 538 BC,
the date of the decree of deliverance by Cyrus
the Great.
The
Book
of Isaiah, in its present form, is by most scholars considered the result
of an extensive editing process, in which the promises of God's salvation are
reinterpreted and claimed for the Judean people through the history of their
exile and return to the land of Judah.
Very few scholars dispute these conclusions and argue for the unity of the
composition of the book. When the Septuagint
version was made (about 250
BC), the entire contents of the book were ascribed to Isaiah, the son of
Amoz. In the time of Jesus, the book existed in its present form, with many
prophecies in the disputed portions quoted in the New
Testament as the words of Isaiah.
Traditionally,
the Book
of Daniel was believed to have been written by its namesake during and
shortly after the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC. While some
conservative Christians and Orthodox Jews still hold this belief, most
mainstream scholars find this view to be untenable in light of both
archaeology and textual analysis. Scholarship on the dating of the Book of
Daniel largely falls into two camps: one dates the book in its entirety to a
single author during the desecration of the Jerusalem Temple (167–164 BC)
under the Syrian-Greek ruler Antiochus
IV Epiphanes (ruled 175–164 BC); the other sees it as a collection of
stories dating from different times throughout the Hellenistic period (with
some of the material possibly going back to very late Persian period), with
the visions in chapters 7–12 having been added during the desecration of
Antiochus. For example, Hartman and Di Lella, 1978 suggest multiple
authorship, with some material dating to the 3rd century, culminating with a
2nd-century editor and redactor.
The
reasons for these dates include a use of Greek
and Persian
words in the Hebrew of the text unlikely to happen in the 6th century, that
the style of the Hebrew and Aramaic
was more like that of a later date, that the use of the word "Chaldean"
occurs in a fashion unknown to the 6th century, and that repeated historical
gaffes betray an ignorance of the facts of the 6th century that a high
official in Babylon would not have, while the 2nd-century history was found to
be far more accurate (see Ferrell Till's analysis).
John
Collins, on the other hand, finds it impossible for the "court
tales" portion of Daniel to have been written in 2nd century BC because
of textual analysis. In his 1992 Anchor Bible Dictionary entry for the
Book of Daniel, he states, "it is clear that the court-tales in chapters
1–6 were 'not written in Maccabean times'. It is not even possible to
isolate a single verse which betrays an editorial insertion from that
period."
[edit]
The New Testament
[edit]
Approximate dates
The
most accepted historical understanding of how the Gospels developed is known
as the two-source
hypothesis. This theory holds that Mark is the oldest gospel. Matthew and
Luke are believed to come later, and draw on Mark and also on a source that is
now believed to be lost, called the Q
document, or just "Q". John is thought by many to be a later
work. Some, but not most, conservative scholars reject the two-source
hypothesis and say it suffers from a number of weaknesses in terms of
historicity and textual issues. [1][2][3]
[edit]
The Gnostic Scriptures
The
Nag
Hammadi library, a collection of books found in 1945, some refer to as Gnostic
Scriptures (which include the Gospel
of Thomas), were not accepted as canonical by Jerome
in the 4th century AD. They were written in Coptic
and are generally dated to the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, though the Gospel of
Thomas has ignited some debate, and scholars argue that it dates from 50 AD
(Koester, HDS) to the late 2nd century AD (Miers).
[edit]
Traditional school
See
also Biblical
literalism.
In Late
Antiquity and throughout the Middle
Ages, neither Jewish nor Christian scholars questioned that the Tanakh,
and for Christians the New
Testament as well, were accurate historical renditions of the events
portrayed, written by the traditionally-attributed authors. The only errors
acknowledged were minor ones attributable to copyists. Today, such views are
largely confined to Orthodox
Jewish scholars and evangelical and/or fundamentalist scholars such as Kenneth
Kitchen, Gleason
Archer, and Bryant
G. Wood.
Many
of the scholars who hold conservative views believe that Torah
was written from the mid to late 15th
century BC, on the basis of 1 Kings 6:1. Similarly, they say, the book of Isaiah
in its entirety was written by Isaiah himself (as stated in Isaiah 1:1), and
that the book of Daniel
was written by the court official who lived and worked from the time of Nebuchadnezzar
to the first year of Cyrus.
Where events and people are mentioned before they happened or were born, they
are explained as evidences of God's ability to tell the future in his
communication with mankind; this reliance on the supernatural renders the
approach essentially irrefutable.
These
traditional views went unchallenged down to the emergence
of rationalism in the 17th
century (see documentary
hypothesis).
In
respect of the New
Testament, scholars of the traditionalist school such as FF
Bruce, Gary
Habermas, Norman
Geisler, Bruce
Metzger, John
Wenham, John
Warwick Montgomery, and Edwin
M. Yamauchi agree with the historically and traditionally recognized dates
for the New Testament, such as
- The
first three Gospels, Acts, Paul's Epistles, Hebrews, James, and Peter's
Epistles were written in the period between about 50–65 AD.
- The
Gospel of John, John's Epistles, Jude, and Revelation were written between
about 85–100 AD.
[edit]
See also
[edit]
Further reading
- Dever,
William G. What Did The Biblical Writers Know & When Did They Know
It?, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, USA, 2001.
- Fox,
Robin Lane The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible,
NY, 1992.
- Hartman,
Louis Francis, and Di Lella, Alexander A. (Ed) The Book of Daniel
(Anchor Bible, Vol. 23), Anchor Bible, 1978.
- Külling,
Samuel Zur Datierung der Genesis "P" Stücke PhD
dissertation, 1970
- Pagels,
Elaine The Gnostic Gospels, Vintage, reissued 1989.
[edit]
External links
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_the_Bible"
A Short History of Christian Fundamentalism
by Lenny Flank
(c) copyright 2005
Christian fundamentalism is almost uniquely an American phenomenon.
Although most of the history of fundamentalist thought occurs in the United
States, however, this phenomenon was itself, originally, a reaction to a
series of intellectual trends that happened in Europe.
From the time of the earliest Christian church in the first century CE, to
the time of the European Enlightenment, the dominant view was that the Bible
had been directly revealed by God to a small number of authors. The first five
books of the Bible, known as the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers and Deuteronomy), were, according to tradition, all written by Moses
during the 40 years of wandering in the Sinai desert.
One of the first criticisms of the traditional view of the Mosaic
authorship of the Pentateuch was made in Germany in 1520, when the Reformation
scholar Carlstadt wrote an essay pointing out that the description of Moses's
death (Deuteronomy 32:5-12) shared several literary characteristics with
portions of the rest of Deuteronomy. Since, Carlstadt pointed out, Moses could
not have written of his own death, he concluded that the same person had
written both sections of the book, and that person could not have been Moses.
In 1651, Thomas Hobbes, in his book Leviathan, also concluded that
several portions of the Pentateuch could not have been written by Moses. In
support of his hypothesis, he cited several Biblical verses which referred to
events that happened after Moses's death. Twenty-five years later, the Jewish
philosopher Baruch Spinoza concluded that not only had Moses not written the
Pentateuch, but much of the rest of the Old Testament was not written by a
single person either, and was probably edited together from pre-existing
manuscripts.
The first serious attempt to examine the matter happened in 1753, when a
French doctor, Jean Astruc, published a pamphlet (anonymously) titled Conjectures
on the Original Documents That Moses Appears to Have Used in Composing the
Book of Genesis. Astruc pointed out that many of the incidents and events
described in Genesis were "doublets", that is, they often were
described twice in back-to-back accounts that differed in details. There are,
for instance, two different accounts of the creation story in Genesis 1 and 2,
and two different accounts of the Flood story in later chapters. The presence
of these repeated but different accounts, Astruc concluded, didn't make sense
if, as tradition held, Genesis was a single narrative written in complete form
by a single author.
To explain the presence of these doublets, Astruc proposed what later
became known as the "Documentary Hypothesis". Using the techniques
of literary and textual analysis that had already been used for secular
literature, Astruc compared the wording and style of various passages in
Genesis and concluded that there were two distinctly different accounts in
Genesis which, based on differing literary conventions, were written by two
different authors at different times, and then later combined into one book.
One of these accounts consistently referred to God as "Elohim", or
"The Lord", while the other account consistently referred to God by
the name "Jehovah". Astruc labeled these two different sources as
"A" and "B".
Within a short time, a group of German scholars expanded upon Astruc's
ideas, and produced a school of Biblical study that became known as
"Higher Criticism". By taking the linguistic/textual analysis done
by Astruc and applying it to the rest of the Old Testament (which also
contained doublets or even triplets -- there are for instance three different
versions of the Ten Commandments in Exodus and Deuteronomy), the German
scholars Eichhorn, Ewal, DeWette, Graf and Wellhausen identified four
different sources for the Old Testament. One of these source documents always
referred to God by the name "Jehovah", and therefore was labeled the
"J" source. The J source was also distinguished by the particular
words it used to describe the pre-Israeli inhabitants of the Promised Land,
and tended to depict God in anthropomorphic terms. From implicit political
assumptions made in the descriptions, it is apparent that the J source was
identified with the Aaronid priesthood which was centered in Judah. The second
identified source always referred to God as "Elohim", and was called
the "E" source. The E source used different words to describe the
pre-Israeli inhabitants of the Holy Land, and also tended to avoid
anthropomorphic depictions of God. The political opinions implied in the
account suggest that this source was allied with the Shiloh priesthood in
Israel. The book of Deuteronomy had linguistic styles and topics that did not
match either the J or E source, and thus was identified with a different
source "D". Literary similarities led to the conclusion that the D
source had also written the books of Joshua, Judges, First and Second Samuel,
and First and Second Kings. Since the D source makes references to material
found in both the J and E source, it was concluded that it had been written
later. Finally, there is a fourth source text that seemed to be most concerned
with details of rituals and the conduct of priests, as well as a penchant for
long lists of dates and geneologies. This has been labeled the "P"
source (for "priestly"). This is the source for the detailed laws of
Leviticus. The P source is generally held to have been the most recent,
chronologically. All of these varying sources were later edited together into
their final form by an unknown person or persons known as the Redactor, who
probably performed this task in about 400 BC. This view, known as the
Documentary Hypothesis, is still held today by most Biblical scholars.
When the Documentary Hypothesis entered the United States during the late
19th century and became widely accepted (under the name
"Modernism"), it exploded like a bombshell among the conservative
elements of the Protestant churches. Not only did the German school reject the
traditional idea that the Pentateuch was the work of a single author who had
recorded the words dictated by God, but it concluded that the Bible itself was
a collection of different documents by different authors, each with differing
theologies and motives. The American conservatives flatly rejected the idea of
a Bible that was pieced together years after the events which it describes.
William Jennings Bryan, one of the most prominent Christian conservatives,
thundered, "Give the modernist three words, 'allegorical,' 'poetical,'
and 'symbolically,' and he can suck the meaning out of every vital doctrine of
the Christian Church and every passage in the Bible to which he objects."
In response to the Modernist Higher Criticism, conservative Protestants in
the United States met, in the Niagara Bible Conference in1897, to hammer out a
counter-theology, a process continued at the 1910 General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church. The conservative traditionalists settled on a set of five
principles which, they argued, defined Christianity. These were (1) the
inerrancy of the Bible, (2) the Virgin Birth and the deity of Jesus, (3) the
belief that Jesus died to redeem mankind's sin and that salvation resulted
through faith in Jesus, (4) the physical resurrection of Jesus, and (5) the
imminent Second Coming of Jesus. Between 1910 and 1915, a series of twelve
booklets were published, titled The Fundamentals; A Testimony to the Truth,
containing 94 articles by 64 authors, setting out and defending these
principles. The introduction to the first volume declared, "In 1909 God
moved two Christian laymen to set aside a large sum of money for issuing
twelve volumes that would set forth the fundamentals of the Christian faith,
and which were to be sent free of charge to ministers of the gospel,
missionaries, Sunday school superintendents, and others engaged in aggressive
Christian work throughout the English speaking world." From these
booklets, the conservative Christians became known as "the
fundamentalists". Financed by the wealthy oil businessmen Milton and
Lyman Stewart, some 3 million copies of The Fundamentals were printed.
In 1919, the World Conference on Christian Fundamentals met in Philadelphia.
At around the same time, the Moody Bible Institute was formed to publish
fundamentalist defenses of Biblical inerrancy, and fundamentalist theologian
Cyrus Scofield published an annotated Reference Bible, with margin notes
defending literalist interpretations of Biblical passages. The fundamentalist
conviction that they alone were the True Christians led to a long series of
bitter fights with other Christians, as fundamentalists sought to take over as
many theological institutes as they could in order to purge them of
"modernists" and "liberals".
In addition to the five Biblical "fundamentals", the conservative
Protestants also came to largely accept and embrace a number of other concepts
that had not previously been a tenet of any of the major Christian
denominations. These included (1) exclusivity, the idea that only the
fundamentalists are able to authoritatively interpret the "true
meaning" of the Bible, and thus are the only legitimate "True
Christians", and (2) separation, the idea that not only are any other
Christian interpretations (Catholic, liberal churches) utterly wrong, but it
is the duty of fundamentalists to oppose and overcome them, while remaining
apart from their corrupting influence. These characteristics, indeed, have
today come to be almost the defining characteristics of any
"fundamentalist" church.
The majority of the essays included in The Fundamentals were attacks
on Higher Criticism, and defenses of an inerrant Bible that was to be taken as
literal history and revelation. Other essays attacked the idea of the
"Social Gospel", in which many liberal Christians asserted that
Christians should ally with other social groups and become active in political
movements to improve the living conditions for all humans. The fundamentalists
rejected this idea, arguing instead that, since the Second Coming was
imminent, the only task of the church should be to save as many souls as
possible in the short time left before the world came to an end. The
fundamentalists also did not want to associate with what they viewed as
heretical and apostate liberal Christians.
It was the third major target of the fundamentalists, however, which
ignited a conflict that continues to this day and is the direct ancestor of
the creationist/intelligent design movement -- the political campaign
targeting science, and, in particular, evolution.
In the years after Darwin first published On the Origin of Species,
there was, as Darwin had expected, a storm of criticism from religious figures
who viewed the idea that humans had descended from animals as a direct attack
on the Bible. Anglican Bishop Sam Wilberforce, in a public debate with
evolution-supporter Thomas Huxley, famously asked if it was on his father's
side or mother's side that Huxley claimed descent from apes. In a remarkably
short time, however, religion had made its peace with Darwin, and by 1900,
nearly every religious authority in Europe accepted the conclusions of
science, just as it had accepted the conclusions of the Bible's literary
scholars concerning the Documentary Hypothesis.
In America, however, the situation was quite different. The fundamentalists
rejected evolution and the scientific outlook with all the fervor and vitriol
that they had aimed at the German Biblical scholars. Princeton theologian J.
Gresham Machen declared, "The root of the movement (liberalism) is one;
the many varieties of modern liberal religion are rooted in naturalism--that
is, in the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God (as
distinguished from the ordinary course of nature) in connection with the
origin of Christianity . . . our principle concern . . . is to show that the
liberal attempt at reconciling Christianity with modern science has really
relinquished everything distinctive of Christianity, so that what remains is
in essentials only that same indefinite type of religious aspiration which was
in the world before Christianity came upon the scene. In trying to remove from
Christianity everything that could possibly be objected to in the name of
science, in trying to bribe off the enemy by those concessions which the enemy
most desires, the apologist has really abandoned what he started out to
defend...The plain fact is that liberalism, whether it be true or false, is no
mere 'heresy' -- no mere divergence at isolated points from Christian
teaching. On the contrary it proceeds from a totally different root, and it
constitutes, in essentials a unitary system of its own . . . It differs from
Christianity in its view of God, of man, of the seat of authority and the way
of salvation . . . Christianity is being attacked from within by a movement
which is anti-Christian to the core." Tent revivalist Billy Sunday
referred to evolution as a "bastard theory" which was supported only
by "hireling ministers".
Fundamentalist religious organizations formed alliances with conservative
lawmakers to pass "monkey laws" -- laws which made it illegal to
teach evolution -- in almost half of the states. In 1928, for instance, the
state of Arkansas passed a law (by referendum) making it illegal to teach
"the theory or doctrine that mankind ascended or descended from a lower
order of animals." (Arkansas Initiated Act 1, 1928, cited in Eldredge
1982, p. 15 and LaFollette, 1983, p. 5) Another such law was the Butler Act,
approved by the Tennessee state legislature in March 1925. The Butler act
stated: "It shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities,
Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole
or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that
denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to
teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals."
(Butler Act, Tennessee State Legislature, 1925)
The American Civil Liberties Union decided to challenge the
constitutionality of the new Tennessee law, and announced that it would defend
any teacher who would intentionally violate the Butler Act to produce a test
case. In Dayton, Tennessee, biology teacher John T Scopes volunteered,
probably with the encouragement of local officials who wanted to generate some
publicity. William Bell Riley, the founder and president of the World
Christian Fundamentals Association, asked William Jennings Bryan to join the
legal team defending the Butler Act, which in turn led Clarence Darrow, one of
the most prominent lawyers in the US, to join the Scopes defense team. The
result was the Scopes Monkey Trial, perhaps the most famous court proceeding
in American history. Amidst the carnival-like atmosphere (aided by the acid
commentary of widely-read journalist HL Mencken), the trial degenerated into
an attack and counter-attack concerning the influence of fundamentalism on
science and education. Bryan himself took the stand as an "expert witness
on the Bible", and was grilled by Darrow for two hours concerning his
fundamentalist interpretations:
"DARROW: I will read it
to you from the Bible: "And the Lord God said unto the serpent, because
thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast
of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go and dust shalt thou eat all the
days of thy life." Do you think that is why the serpent is compelled to
crawl upon its belly?
BRYAN: I believe that.
DARROW: Have you any idea
how the snake went before that time?
BRYAN: No, sir.
DARROW: Do you know whether
he walked on his tail or not?
BRYAN: No, sir. I have no
way to know. (Laughter in audience)." (Scopes trial transcript)
Bryan thundered that Darrow's only purpose was "to cast ridicule on
everybody who believes in the Bible", leading Darrow to shoot back,
"We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from
controlling the education of the United States." (Scopes trial
transcript)
Although Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution and was fined $100, the
case was overturned on appeal due to a technicality, robbing the ACLU of its
chance to take the matter to the Supreme Court. For the fundamentalist
movement, however, the Scopes trial was a disaster. Sarcastic newspaper
articles, by Mencken and others, as well as novels such as Sinclair Lewis's
Elmer Gantry, depicted fundamentalists as uneducated hicks and backwoods
country bumpkins. The political victories won by the fundamentalists,
including the monkey laws, died within a few years. The infighting within
seminaries and theological institutes between fundamentalists and modernists
led to a steep decline in students training for the clergy, and a sharp
decrease in church memberships. By the time of the Great Depression in 1929,
fundamentalism was all but dead as an effective social or political movement.
The beginning of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, after the end of World
War II, revived the fundamentalist's fortunes. The atheistic Leninists who ran
the USSR were a convenient enemy for the fundamentalists, and they quickly
entered into alliances with right-wing anti-communist political figures. In an
era of rampant McCarthyism, it was a fertile breeding ground for
fundamentalist theology, and gave them a measure of political influence that
they had not enjoyed for decades. It was not until the mid-1970's, however,
that the fundamentalist wing of Christianity began to make political influence
an aim in itself, and actively sought to use the power of right-wing
politicians to enforce their fundamentalist religious and social opinions onto
the rest of society. This marked the rise of the Religious Right, the
immediate ancestors of the ID/creationists.
Like the fundamentalist movement of the 20's, the Religious Right was a
reactionary response to social changes which they found religiously
objectionable and intolerable. The late 1960's were a time of intense and
far-reaching social change in the US. Within the space of ten years, a new
generation had placed all of the traditional American social structures under
critical examination, and found them wanting. The civil rights movement broke
down traditional social roles and also led to the renewed rise of the Social
Gospel advocates; anti-war and human rights movements led to questions about
patriotism and the role of the US in world affairs; participatory democracy
movements challenged traditional political authority; women's liberation and
gay rights movements challenged sexual mores and family structures; interest
in Eastern religious traditions led to skepticism about the role of
traditional Christianity in society. All of these were anathema to the
fundamentalists.
Fundamentalist hostility was particularly marked towards a number of
Supreme Court decisions during the period. The first of these was the 1954 Brown
v Board of Education decision, which outlawed segregated schools. Southern
fundamentalists in particular viewed segregation as Biblically-approved, and
bitterly fought desegregation and the civil rights movement. In response to
the 1954 decision, many fundamentalist churches set up their own private
schools, which were not subject to the Court's decision and were therefore
free to continue to practice segregation. (The fundamentalist Bob Jones
University would later sue the Federal government in an effort to be allowed
to continue to ban Black students; after losing, BJU banned inter-racial
dating among its students, a policy that was only withdrawn in the face of
public disapproval in the wake of a visit by President George W Bush in 2000.)
In 1961, the Supreme Court dealt the fundamentalists another blow when, in the
Engel v Vitale case, it outlawed government-sanctioned prayer in
schools, saying, "We think that, in this country, it is no part of the
business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the
American people to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by
government." (US Supreme Court, Engel v Vitale, 1961) In 1968, the Court
ruled, in the case of Epperson v Arkansas, that all of the various
anti-evolution "monkey laws" were unconstitutional. Finally, in
1973, the Roe v Wade decision legalized abortion in the United States.
The fundamentalists saw their views as coming under attack on nearly every
front. In response, as they did in the 20's, fundamentalists in the 1970's
sought to gain political influence by allying themselves with right-wing
politicians. As it happened, the right wing of the Republican Party was also
looking for allies to help it defeat not only the Democrats, but the moderate
and traditional-conservative elements within their own party. The marriage was
made. After the 1976 elections, Robert Grant formed a group called Christian
Voice to channel fundamentalist money and votes to right-wing Republican
candidates, including Ronald Reagan and Dan Quayle. One of Christian Voice's
most effective members was Richard Viguerie, who turned direct-mail marketing
into an astoundingly effective method of raising money and informing
supporters which candidates were "godly" and which weren't. After a
falling-out with Grant in 1979, Viguerie left and, working together with
conservative political figure Paul Weyrich and televangelist Jerry Falwell,
formed the first effective national fundamentalist political organization,
Moral Majority Inc. Over the next decade, under a number of organizations such
as Christian Coalition, Concerned Women of America, Focus on the Family,
Coalition for Traditional Values, and Eagle Forum, fundamentalist Christians
gained unprecedented political power and influence -- which they continue to
exercise under the Presidency of George W Bush.
The Religious Right was also quick to take up the anti-Darwin crusade. In
late 1981, Falwell telecast an appeal for money to help defend the
anti-evolution law in Arkansas -- using as the backdrop for his appeal the
very same Dayton, Tennessee, courthouse in which the original Scopes trial was
held. Moral Majority also ran a number of ads in various magazines to
publicize the trial and raise money. One of the ads took the form of a
"survey", which asked the reader (with all the appropriate catch
words emphasized) to mail in a "ballot":
"Cast your vote for
creation or evolution. Where do you stand in this vital debate?
1. Do you agree with
'theories' of evolution that DENY the Biblical account of creation?
2. Do you agree that public
school teachers should be permitted to teach our children AS FACT that they
are descended from APES?
3. Do you agree with the
evolutionists who are attempting to PREVENT the Biblical account of creation
from also being taught in public schools?" (TV Guide, June 13, 1981, p.
A-105)
Those who sent in their "ballot" (with the proper answers
checked) were put on Moral Majority's mailing list for fundraising and further
anti-evolution mailings.
Falwell also turned the resources of Liberty University, a large Bible
college which was wholly funded by Moral Majority, towards the fight against
evolution. All students at Liberty University, regardless of major, were
required to take a semester-long course in creationist biology. The
state-approved teacher training program at Liberty was heavily focused on
creationism. As a symbol of the close affinities between the creationists and
the Moral Majority, Liberty University Chancellor Jerry Falwell himself
awarded an honorary doctorate to ICR founder Henry Morris during commencement
exercises in 1989.
As researcher Philip Kitcher points out, both the creationists and the
fundamentalists gained benefits from this partnership. "Jerry Falwell's
Old Time Gospel Hour offers a forum for broadcasting creationist ideas. On the
other hand, Falwell needs concrete issues around which to build his
movement." (Kitcher, 1982, p. 2) The televangelists recognized the
creation "scientists" as powerful apologetic tools to bring new
people into the Christian political movement, while the creationists came to
depend upon the Religious Right as a powerful political and economic ally.
Moral Majority co-founder Tim LaHaye (he later became the author of the
fundamentalist Left Behind series of books) had close ties to the
creationists. In his influential fundamentalist manifesto Battle for the
Mind, LaHaye put the fight against evolution squarely in the middle of the
evangelical Christian world-view. The basic enemy of the Christian Right is
something they refer to as "secular humanism", which seems to be a
catch-all term for any outlook or philosophy which they find religiously
offensive--everything from pornography to feminism to socialism to
evolutionary science. "Most of the evils in the world today," says
LaHaye, "can be traced to humanism, which has taken over our government,
the UN, education, TV and most of the other influential things in life."
(LaHaye, 1980, p. 1)
And a major component of this "secular humanism", LaHaye asserts,
is evolutionary theory: "The humanistic doctrine of evolution has
naturally led to the destruction of the moral foundation upon which this
country was originally built. If you believe that man is an animal, you will
naturally expect him to live like one. Consequently, almost every sexual law
that is required in order to maintain a morally sane society has been struck
down by the humanists, so that man may follow his animal appetites." (LaHaye,
1980, p. 64) LaHaye's book depicts a diagram of "secular humanism",
which shows a pyramidical construction in which "evolution" rests on
the base of "atheism", in turn supporting "amorality" and,
at the top, the "socialist one world view" (LaHaye, 1980, p. 63)
Some of the statements made by creationists reveal the underlying
connection between creation "science" and LaHaye's religious crusade
against "secular humanism". "Since animals are indiscriminate
with regards to partners in mating," says Henry Morris, "and since
men and women are believed to have evolved from animals, then why shouldn't we
live like animals?" (Morris, Troubled Waters of Evolution, 1974, p. 167)
Morris declared that evolutionary theory is literally the work of the Devil --
given to Nimrod at the Tower of Babel -- and that most scientists refuse to
accept creationism solely because they are atheists. Ken Ham, formerly of the
ICR and now leader of the Answers in Genesis organization, says, "As the
creation foundation is removed, we see the Godly institutions also start to
collapse. On the other hand, as the evolution foundation remains firm, the
structures built on that foundation--lawlessness, homosexuality, abortion,
etc--logically increase. We must understand this connection." (cited in
Eve and Harrold, 1991, pp 58-59) The Creation Science Research Center blamed
the scientific model of evolution for "the moral decay of spiritual
values, which contributes to the destruction of mental health", as well
as "a widespread breakdown in law and order" (Creation Science
Report, April 1976, cited in Numbers, 1992, p. 285). Evolutionary theory, the
CSRC pontificated, is directly responsible for "divorce, abortion, and
rampant venereal diseases." (Segraves, The Creation Report, 1977, cited
in Numbers, 1992, p. 285)
The creationists and the Religious Right thus shared a world-view, a
world-view that revolves around the supposed evils of evolutionary theory.
Both groups see evolution as a major pillar which supports Satanic
"secular humanism", and both are determined to do away with that
pillar and substitute a "Godly" outlook instead--creationism.
"Although they make every effort to be diplomatic about the
subject," notes writer Perry Dean Young, "the religious-right
leaders are not speaking of teaching the story of the creation in Genesis
alongside Darwin's theory; they want it taught instead of evolution. A
headline in Religious Roundtable's newsletter that read 'Get Evolution Out of
Our Schools' let that fact slip." (Young, 1982, p. 73) The creationists
also occasionally let their ultimate goal slip in print too; while pushing the
Arkansas "Balanced Treatment Act" through, creationist Paul
Ellwanger, who drafted the original bill, wrote to a supporter, "Perhaps
this is old hat to you, Tom, and if so, I'd appreciate it your telling me so
and perhaps where you've heard it before--the idea of killing evolution
instead of playing these debating games that we've been playing for nigh over
a decade already." (Attachment to Ellwanger Deposition, McLean v
Arkansas, 1981, cited in Overton Opinion)
But "killing evolution" is not their only goal. The Christian
Right is defiantly open about its ultimate aims. As Bob Werner, a leader of
the "Christian shepherding" movement, bluntly put it, "The
Bible says we are to . . . rule. If you don't rule and I don't rule, the
atheists and the humanists and the agnostics are going to rule. We should be
the head of our school board. We should be the head of our nation. We should
be the Senators and Congressmen. We should be the editors of our newspapers.
We should be taking over every area of life." (cited in Diamond, 1989, p.
45) Paul Weyrich, a co-founder of Moral Majority and director of the
fundamentalist Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, declared,
"We are no longer working to preserve the status quo. We are radicals,
working to overturn the present power structures of this country." (cited
in Young, 1982, p. 321 and Kater 1982, p. 7) Weyrich added, "We are
talking about the Christianizing of America." (cited in Vetter 1982, p.
5) Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry put it, "I want you to just let
a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash
over you. Yes, hate is good... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a
biblical duty, we are called on by God to conquer this country. We don't want
equal time. We don't want pluralism." (The News Sentinel, Ft. Wayne, IN.,
August 16, 1993) "This is God's world, not Satan's," declared
leading fundamentalist political figure Gary North. "Christians are the
lawful heirs, not non-Christians . . . . The long-term goal of Christians in
politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who
refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His
Church's public marks of the covenant--baptism and holy communion--must be
denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel." (Political
Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism, Institute for Christian Economics, 1989,
p.87, p. 102) North continues, "So let us be blunt about it: We must use
the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools
until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious
neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil
government. Then they will be get busy in constructing a Bible-based social,
political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of
the enemies of God." ("The Intellectual Schizophrenia of the New
Christian Right" in Christianity and Civilization: The Failure of the
American Baptist Culture, No. 1, 1982, p. 25)
Televangelist and former Presidential candidate Pat Robertson echoed,
"We have enough votes to run the country. And when the people say 'We've
had enough', we are going to take over (cited in Boston, 1996, p. 29)
Robertson told his supporters that his presidential bid was a direct command
from God: "I heard the Lord saying, 'I have something else for you to do.
I want you to run for President of the United States'". (Washington Post,
Feb 15, 1988, cited in Boston, 1996, p. 39)
In a fundraising letter for the Christian Coalition in July 1991 (Robertson
founded the Coalition and served--along with his son--as one of the four
members of the Board of Directors), Robertson asserted: "We at the
Christian Coalition are raising an army who cares. We are training people to
be effective--to be elected to school boards, to city councils, to state
legislatures and to key positions in political parties. . . . By the end of
this decade, if we work and give and organize and train, the Christian
Coalition will be the most powerful political organization in America."
(cited in Boston, 1996, p. 85) Ralph Reed, who served as Robertson's front man
in the Christian Coalition, said: "What Christians have got to do is take
back this country, one precinct at a time, one neighborhood at a time and one
state at a time . . . I honestly believe that in my lifetime we will see a
country once again governed by Christians." (cited in Boston, 1996, p.
90)
As the fundamentalists pointed out, one of the most important areas in
which "Christians" must "govern" are the local school
districts--and they make it clear that creationism is the issue which provided
them with the opportunity to do this. As Tim LaHaye bluntly put it, "The
elite-evolutionist-humanist is not going to be able to control education in
America forever." (LaHaye 1980, p. 3) Pat Robertson said, "Humanist
values are being taught in the schools through such methods as 'values
clarification'. All of these things constitute an attempt to wean children
away from biblical Christianity". (cited in Boston, 1996, p. 168)
Other fundamentalist apologists were just as clear about their ultimate
goals for public education:
"Our purpose must be to spread the gospel on the new mission field
that the Lord has opened--public high schools". (Jay Alan Sekulow,
American Center for Law and Justice, CASE Bulletin, July 1990)
"To abandon public education to Satan is to compromise our calling.
The attitude and approach of Christians should be that they never expose their
children to public education, but that they should work increasingly to expose
public education to the claims of Christ. Certain specially suited Christians,
in fact, should pray and work tirelessly to obtain teaching and school board
and even administrative positions within public education. The penultimate
goal of these Christians should be the privatization of these larcenous
institutions, and the ultimate aim the bringing of them under the authority of
Christ and His word." (Rev. Andrew Sandlin, Chalcedon Report, March 1994)
"One day, I hope in the next ten years, I trust that we will have more
Christian day schools than there are public schools. I hope I will live to see
the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public
schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be
running them." (Jerry Falwell, America Can Be Saved, 1979)
"There are 15,700 school districts in America. When we get an active
Christian parents' committee in operation in all districts, we can take
complete control of all local school boards. This would allow us to determine
all local policy; select good textbooks; good curriculum programs;
superintendents and principals." (Robert Simonds, Citizens for Excellence
in Education, undated letter, 1984)
"The Christian community has a golden opportunity to train an army of
dedicated teachers who can invade the public school classrooms and use them to
influence the nation for Christ." (D. James Kennedy, Education; Public
Problems and Private Solutions, Coral Ridge Ministries, 1993
A fundraising letter sent from the Creation Science Research Center echoed
these sentiments: "We already have a state-mandated religion of atheism
-- of Godlessness -- of Satanism -- and no church training of one hour a week
will overcome this onslaught of anti-God teachings in the classroom. The
Church must get involved." (Letter from CSRC, cited in LaFollette 1983,
p. 126) Gary North frankly pointed out, "Until the vast majority of
Christians pull their children out of the public schools, there will be no
possibility of creating a theocratic republic." (cited in Blaker, 2003, p
187)
The fundamentalists found willing allies for their crusade, in the form of
the right-wing elements of the Republican Party. The creationists found
powerful allies on the political Right--a partnership which benefited both.
The political right needed issues to organize around and foot soldiers to help
carry out its campaigns -- which were provided in droves by the
fundamentalists. And the GOP was quick to attempt to tap this resource.
Creationists were very active in state textbook committees and curriculum
boards, where they attempted to pressure various states into dropping biology
textbooks which feature evolutionary theory. In June 1996, three families in
Cobb County, Georgia asked that the Cobb County Board of Education remove a
chapter from a fourth grade science textbook. The offending chapter discussed
the age and formation of the universe. In late May, the Ohio House Education
committee rejected (by a margin of just 12-8) a proposed bill that would
require that "scientific arguments . . not in support" of
evolutionary theory be taught whenever evolution is mentioned. Most members of
these state education boards are political appointees, and the fundamentalists
found willing allies in the state and local Republican Party. In the late
1980's, bowing to creationist pressure, the state of Texas mandated that all
biology textbooks carry a disclaimer stating that evolution is "only a
theory" and "not established fact". In March 1996, Alabama
Governor Fob James announced that the ID/creationist book Darwinism on Trial
would be sent to all of the state's 900 science teachers, at a cost of almost
$3,000. The book was, James declared, "an attempt to improve science
education by encouraging healthy and constructive criticism of evolutionary
theory." A few months later, Ohio State Representative Ron Hood
introduced Bill 692, which mandated: "Whenever a theory of the origin of
humans, other living things, or the universe that might commonly be referred
to as 'evolution' is included in the instructional program provided by any
school district or educational service center, both evidence and arguments
supporting or consistent with the theory and evidence and arguments
problematic for, inconsistent with, or not supporting the theory shall be
included." State Republican Parties in Texas, Oklahoma and Iowa all
adopted platform planks which advocate teaching creationism in schools.
Even the national Republican leadership demonstrated a willingness to
kowtow to the creationists. In its "Contract for America", the GOP
asserted, of its proposed "Family Reinforcement Act", that it
"will strengthen the rights of parents to protect their children against
education programs that undermine the values taught at home"--a code word
for removing evolution, sex education, and other things which offend
fundamentalist sensibilities. During the campaign, Presidential candidate Pat
Buchanan appealed to fundamentalist support by attacking Darwin. When asked by
a commentator if he favored the teaching of creationism in public schools,
Buchanan replied, "You may believe you descended from monkeys--I don't
believe it. I think you're created--I think you're a creature of God."
When asked, "Do parents have the right, in your judgment, to insist, if
they believe in creationism, that it also be taught in public schools?",
Buchanan declared, "I think they have a right to insist that godless
evolution not be taught to their children, or their children not be
indoctrinated into it."
Several days later, fellow GOP candidate Alan Keyes was asked about
creationism and its critics. "I think they ought to take a look at our
country's founding document," Keyes replied. "It says, 'All men were
created', and 'endowed by their creator with inalienable rights'. . . I don't
think it is only a question of Judeo-Christian beliefs. It is of American
beliefs."
Apparently, to Keyes, Christian religious tenets and American political
programs are one and the same. To the initiated faithful, the creationists
also make no secret of their political goals. As Henry Morris of the Institute
for Creation Science admits, the ultimate goal of the creationists is to bring
first science, then the rest of society under Biblical proscriptions: "A
key purpose of the ICR is to bring the field of education--and then our whole
world insofar as possible--back to the foundational truth of special creation
and primeval history as revealed first in Genesis and further emphasized
throughout the Bible".
In essence, the fundamentalists and their creationist allies want to do for
the United States what the fundamentalist Taliban did for Afghanistan and the
Ayatollahs have done for Iran--they want to run the country in accordance with
their interpretation of "God's will". As they make clear, they are
perfectly willing to dismantle most of American democracy in order to save us
all from Satan. Rev. James Robison put it like this, "Let me tell you
something else about the character of God. If necessary, God would raise up a
tyrant--a man who might not have the best ethics--to protect the freedom and
the interests of the ethical and the godly." (cited in Vetter 1982, p. 6)
And there seem to be no dearth of fundamentalists willing to volunteer to
become that "tyrant".
The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
is a book written
by Max
Weber, a German
economist
and sociologist
in 1904 and 1905
that began as a series of essays.
The original edition was in German and was entitled: Die protestantische
Ethik und der 'Geist' des Kapitalismus. An English translation was
made in 1930 by Talcott
Parsons, and several editions have been released.
Weber
wrote that capitalism
evolved when the Protestant
(particularly Calvinist)
ethic
influenced large numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world,
developing their own enterprises
and engaging in trade
and the accumulation of wealth
for investment. In other words, the Protestant ethic was a force behind an
unplanned and uncoordinated mass
action that led to the development of capitalism.
This idea is also known as "the Weber thesis".
Error!
Unknown switch argument.
Cover of the original German edition.
[edit]
Book contents
The
book is not a detailed study of Protestantism
but rather an introduction into Weber's later studies of interaction between
various religious ideas and economics.
In The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber argues that Puritan
ethics and ideas
influenced the development of capitalism.
Religious devotion, however, usually accompanied a rejection of worldly
affairs, including the pursuit of wealth and possessions. Why was that not the
case with Protestantism? Weber addresses this apparent paradox
in the book.
He
defines spirit of capitalism as the ideas and habits that favour the rational
pursuit of economic
gain. Weber points out that such a spirit
is not limited to Western
culture if one considers it as the attitude of individuals,
but that such individuals — heroic entrepreneurs, as he calls them — could
not by themselves establish a new economic order (capitalism).
The most common tendencies were the greed for profit with minimum effort and
the idea that work was a curse and burden to be avoided especially when it
exceeded what was enough for modest life. As he wrote in his essays:
In
order that a manner of life well adapted to the peculiarities of the
capitalism… could come to dominate others, it had to originate somewhere,
and not in isolated individuals alone, but as a way of life common to the
whole groups of man.
After
defining the "spirit of capitalism," Weber argues that there are
many reasons to find its origins in the religious ideas of the Reformation.
Many observers like William
Petty, Montesquieu,
Henry
Thomas Buckle, John
Keats, and others have commented on the affinity
between Protestantism and the development of commercialism.
Weber
shows that certain types of Protestantism favoured rational pursuit of
economic gain and that worldly activities had been given positive spiritual
and moral meaning. It was not the goal of those religious ideas, but rather a
byproduct — the inherent logic of those doctrines and the advice based upon
them both directly and indirectly encouraged planning and self-denial in the
pursuit of economic gain.
Weber
traced the origins of the Protestant ethic to the Reformation.
The Roman
Catholic Church assured salvation to individuals who accepted the church's
sacraments and submitted to the clerical authority. However, the Reformation
had effectively removed such assurances. From a psychological
viewpoint, the average person had difficulty adjusting to this new worldview,
and only the most devout believers or "religious geniuses" within
Protestanism, such as Martin
Luther, were able to make this adjustment, according to Weber.
In
the absence of such assurances from religious authority, Weber argued that
Protestants began to look for other "signs" that they were saved.
Calvin and his followers taught a doctrine of double predestination, in which
from the beginning God chose some people for salvation and others for
damnation. The inability to influence one's own salvation presented a very
difficult problem for Calvin's followers. It became an absolute duty to
believe that one was chosen for salvation, and to dispel any doubt about that:
lack of self-confidence was evidence of insufficient faith and a sign of
damnation. So, self-confidence took the place of assurance of God's grace.
Worldly
success became one measure of that self-confidence. Luther made an early
endorsement of Europe's emerging labor divisions. Weber identifies the
applicability of Luther's conclusions, noting that a "vocation" from
God was no longer limited to the clergy or church, but applied to any
occupation or trade.
However,
Weber saw the fulfillment of the Protestant ethic not in Lutheranism,
which he dismissed as a rather servile religion, but in Calvinistic
forms of Christianity. The "paradox" Weber found was, in simple
terms:
- According
to the new Protestant religions, an individual was religiously compelled
to follow a secular vocation with as much zeal as possible. A person
living according to this world view was more likely to accumulate money.
- The
new religions (in particular, Calvinism and other more austere Protestant
sects) effectively forbade wastefully using hard earned money and
identified the purchase of luxuries a sin.
Donations to an individual's church or congregation was limited due to the
rejection by certain Protestant sects of icons.
Finally, donation of money to the poor or to charity
was generally frowned on as it was seen as furthering beggary. This social
condition was perceived as laziness, burdening their fellow man, and an
affront to God; by not working, one failed to glorify God.
The
manner in which this paradox was resolved, Weber argued, was the investment
of this money, which gave an extreme boost to nascent
capitalism.
By
the time Weber wrote this essay, he believed that the religious underpinnings
of the Protestant ethic had largely gone from society. He cited the writings
of Benjamin
Franklin, which emphasized frugality, hard work and thrift, but were
mostly free of spiritual content. Weber also attributed the success of mass
production partly to the Protestant ethic. Only after expensive luxuries were
disdained, could individuals accept the uniform products, such as clothes and
furniture, that industrialization offered.
In
his remarkably prescient conclusion to the book, Weber lamented that the loss
of religious underpinning to capitalism's spirit has led to a kind of
involuntary servitude to mechanized industry.
The
Puritan wanted to work in calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticism
was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate
worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the
modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic
conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the
individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly
concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will
so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt. (Page 181,
1953 Scribner's edition.)
Weber
maintained that while Puritan religious ideas had had a major influence on the
development of economic order in Europe and United States, they were not the
only factor (others included the rationalism in scientific pursuit, merging observation
with mathematics,
science of scholarship
and jurisprudence,
rational systematisation of government
administration and economic
enterprise). In the end, the study of Protestant ethic, according to
Weber, merely explored one phase of the emancipation from magic,
that disenchantment of the world that he regarded as the distinguishing
peculiarity of Western
culture.
In
the final endnotes Weber states that he abandoned research into Protestantism
because his colleague Ernst
Troeltsch, a professional theologian,
had initiated work on the book The
Social Teachings of the Christian Churches and Sects. Another
reason for Weber's decision was that Troeltsch's essay had provided the
perspective for a broad comparison of religion and society, which he continued
in his later works (the study of Judaism
and the religions of China
and India).
This
book is also Weber's first brush with the concept of rationalization.
His idea of modern capitalism as growing out of the religious pursuit of
wealth meant a change to a rational means of existence, wealth. At some point
this rational ends outgrew and became unreliant on the underlying religious
movement behind it, leaving only rational capitalism. In essence then, Weber's
"Spirit of Capitalism" is effectively and more broadly a Spirit of
Rationalization.
The
essay can also be interpreted as one of Weber's criticisms of Karl
Marx and his theories. While Marx's historical
materialism held that all human institutions - including religion - were
based on economic
foundations, The Protestant Ethic turns this theory on its head by
implying that a religious movement fostered capitalism, not the other way
around.
[edit]
Table of contents (from the 1958 Scribner's edition,
translated by Parsons)
Part
1. The Problem
I.
Religious Affiliation and Social Stratification
II.
The Spirit of Capitalism
III.
Luther's Conception of the Calling. Task of the Investigation.
Part
2. The Practical Ethics of the Ascetic Branches of Protestantism.
IV.
The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism
A.
Calvinism
Predestination;
Elimination of Magic; Rationalization of the World; Certainty of Salvation;
Lutheranism vs. Calvinism; Catholicism vs. Calvinism; Monasticism vs.
Puritanism; Methodical Ethic; Idea of Proof.
B.
Pietism
Emotionalism;
Spener; Francke; Zinzendorf; German Pietism.
C.
Methodism
D.
The Baptism Sects
Baptist
and Quaker; Sect Principle; Inner Worldly Asceticism; Transformation of the
World.
V.
Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism
Richard
Baxter; Meaning of Work; Justification of Profit; Jewish vs. Puritan
Capitalism; Puritanism and Culture; Saving and Capital; Paradox of Asceticism
and Rich; Serving Both Worlds; Citizenry Capitalistic Ethic; Iron Cage of
Capitalism.
[edit]
Spirit of capitalism
The
first, and probably most vital, feature of the spirit of capitalism was that
it invested “economizing” with high moral significance. The individual
engages in capitalistic economizing not only for the expediency of making a
living, but in the expectation that such activity would test his inner
resources and thus affirm his moral worth. In this regard, the American
novelist Walker
Percy observed, “As long as I am getting rich, I feel well. It is my Presbyterian
blood.”
A
major effect of this spirit, as Durkheim
noted, is that the entrepreneur
performs his tasks with an earnestness of purpose that places them at the
center of his life, and endows them with intrinsic dignity. There is nothing
degrading about them. Such an approach to monetary gain is markedly different
from the sordid passion of greed, for monetary gain was not to be used for
luxury or self-indulgent bodily comfort, but rather was to be saved, and
accumulated. Neither could the resulting frugality be mistaken for
miserliness, as the accumulated resources were to be reinvested in worthy
enterprises. The spirit of capitalism constituted a sort of moral ‘’habitus’’
which burdened the possessor of money with a steward’s obligation toward his
own possessions.
Likewise,
the individual entrepreneur isn’t allowed to become overly absorbed into or
preoccupied with himself. His existence revolves around an objective concern
outside himself, which unceasingly demands his devotion and thus, becomes a
test of his self-worth. By its very nature, these economic practices require
reference to a goal; however, increase in capital becomes the ultimate point
of reference.
Ultimately,
the point of the spirit of capitalism is to attribute moral significance to
entrepreneurial activity and lend meaning to the existence of those committed
to it.
[edit]
See also
[edit]
Related books
- Ephraim
Fischoff - The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism, Social Research, Vol.XI, 1944, pp.62-68
[edit]
External links
German
Wikisource
has original text related to this article:
Die
protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism"
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