Saving the Protestant Ethic

Abstract

Abstract Going back to the Puritans, Protestant orientations to work and economics have shaped religious practice and wider American culture for several centuries. But setting aside the classical “Protestant ethic” associated with the early Puritans, American Protestantism has encompassed a wide range of orientations to work, some of which channeled religious enerigies away from the activities of day-to-day life. Saving the Protestant Ethic surveys an intra-religious movement seeking to “make work matter to God” among a religious population that previously sequestered religious energies from careers and secular work. Bearing the name the “faith and work movement,” this effort puts on display the creative capacities of religious and lay leaders to adapt a faith system to the changing socioeconomic conditions of advanced capitalism. Building from the insights and theory of Max Weber, Saving the Protestant Ethic draws on archival research and interviews with movement leaders to survey and assess the surging number of new organizations, books, conferences, worship songs, seminary classes, vocational programming, and study groups promoting classically Protestant and Calvinist ideas of work and vocation with American evangelicalism. Such efforts are traced back to early twentieth-century business leaders and theologically trained leaders who saw a desperate need for a new “work ethic” for religious laity occupying professional, managerial, and creative-class work.