Studies in the Sociology of Religion. I. The Sociology of Protestantism

Abstract

Scientific hypothesis: A system of conditional federation prevails not only objectively in terms of constitutional law and the mutual service nexus of an economic order, but subjectively in the terms under which religious groups consociate and in which religion rationalizes the process of life. The two are closely related. The writer proposes to approach the problem of American sectionalism from the angle of religious group-mindedness; this in view of the contentious situation within the corpus Christianorum in America and elsewhere. The present article sketches the heuristic principles entailed in the theories of Troeltsch and Weber. The salvation pragma of Luther and Calvin entail radically different concepts of natural law, of the positive law of Christianity, and of the relation between the two. The result is for the Calvinist a group-trust-at-law, the contractual relationship of a fellowship, an element of corporateness and a unitary order; for the Lutheran a status under a faith-trust in a dual institutional order. From different concepts of salvation follow different social types in the individual, the group, the state. Different basic concepts of law entail different relations between individual, group, and state. The justification by faith alone, in the one case, the insistence on effective faith in the other, entail different lines of individuation, different terms of consociation: a radically different behavioristic equilibration in technique and results. This technique of manipulation under a faith-trust in the one case, under a law-trust in the other, makes much of the concept of calling and Beruf und Amt which may be said to entail in the one case the idea of getting ahead and making the best of one's self-and of staying put and making the best of a station in the other case. This idea of calling, radiant center of social control through the transcedental rewards attached to it, entails a new stewardship of riches, of time, of place utilities, of labor, of risk and profits: a certain complementary mindedness of the two types for adequate function under capitalism. The one form of Protestantism has constituted the enterpriser, the other, quality labor; however different from each other and from Catholicism, they have laid the ideological foundation of capitalism by rationalizing the economic process under the idea of asceticism.