‘I will learn from it for as long as I live’ – religious reading and functional literacy skills

Mikko Moilanen,Hilde Leikny Sommerseth

doi:10.1080/03585522.2020.1786449

Mikko Moilanen, Hilde Leikny Sommerseth

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1080/03585522.2020.1786449

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Abstract

ABSTRACT Max Weber claims in his well-known book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, that the emergence of capitalism had its roots in the Protestant work ethic. Becker and Woessmann’s seminal 2009 paper finds that the more likely relationship between Protestantism and economic prosperity runs via literacy. They claim that Protestants unintendedly acquired literacy skills that functioned as human capital in the economic sphere by adhering Luther’s call to learn to read the Bible on their own. In this paper, we investigate at individual level to what extent one by reading Holy scripts acquired functional literacy skills. By using unique individual-level data from nineteenth-century Protestant Norway, we are able to identify offsprings of families known to be intensive readers of religious texts. Our results indicate that the effect of religious reading on functional literacy was restricted: religious reading gave better skills to read easily understood texts, but did not give better skills to read more advanced texts. Our results give more nuances in our understanding of what role pre-modern Nordic religious reading played in economic progress in Lutheran Nordic countries.

Highlights

According to Max Weber (Weber, 1904/1905), the origins of capitalism were in the Protestant work ethic that made accumulation of wealth acceptable and provided the moral foundation for industrialisation
Becker and Woessmann claim that as an unintended side effect of this exhortation, Protestants acquired linguistic and methodological skills ‘that functioned as human capital in the economic sphere’ (Becker & Woessmann, 2009, p. 581)
The above economists have not touched the central claim of Becker and Woessmann (2009), namely that learning to read, understand, and interpret the Bible gave Protestants skills that functioned as human capital in the economic sphere

Summary

Introduction

According to Max Weber (Weber, 1904/1905), the origins of capitalism were in the Protestant work ethic that made accumulation of wealth acceptable and provided the moral foundation for industrialisation. Over one hundred years later, economists have shown interest in revisiting this so-called Weber hypothesis empirically using historical data. This has propelled alternative explanations for Weber’s observations. The key feature in their argument is Luther’s call to teach people reading skills so that they could understand Bible by themselves. Becker and Woessmann claim that as an unintended side effect of this exhortation, Protestants acquired linguistic and methodological skills ‘that functioned as human capital in the economic sphere’ The key understanding, as Becker and Woessmann argues, is that skills acquired by reading, understanding, and interpreting the Bible were of value in other tasks beyond the religious sphere

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