by Max Weber
300) The widespread purchase of English country estates by bourgeois [bürgerlich] capital was followed by the great age of agriculture.
301) For an account of how this was expressed in the political life of Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century, especially during the War of Independence, see Sharpless, A Quaker Experiment in Government, Philadelphia, 1902.
302) Defoe was an ardent Nonconformist.
303) Even Spener (Theologische Bedenken, op. cit., pp. 426f., 429, 432ff.), though he regards the merchant’s calling as full of temptations and snares, declares, in answer to a question, “I am pleased when I see that a dear friend has no scruples regarding business itself, but recognizes it as the way of life it is, so that the human race may be profited and charity be shown according to God’s will.” True, Spener does occasionally, in the Lutheran manner, with reference to 1 Timothy 6.8–9, and to Jesus Sirach [Ecclesiasticus]—see above!—describe the desire to be rich as a great snare which must be avoided at all costs, and adopts the “subsistence standpoint” (Theologische Bedenken, p. 435, top). However, he modifies this by pointing to the prosperous and yet God-fearing sectarians [note 253 in this edition]. For him, too, wealth as the effect of industrious labor in the calling poses no problem. Owing to the Lutheran strand in his thinking, his standpoint is less consistent than Baxter’s.
304) Baxter (op. cit., vol. 2, p. 16) warns against the employment of “heavy, flegmatic, sluggish, fleshly, slothful persons” as “servants” and recommends the use of “godly” servants, not only because “ungodly” servants would be mere “eye-servants,” but especially because “a truly godly servant will do all your service in obedience to God, as if God himself had bid him do it.” Others were inclined “to make no great matter of conscience of it.” The hallmark of sanctity, however, was not the outward profession of religion, but the “conscience to do their duty.” It is evident that the interests of God and that of the employer are here becoming suspiciously merged. Even Spener (Theologische Bedenken, vol. 3, p. 272), who elsewhere urges his readers to allow time for thinking about God, makes the assumption that the workers must be content with an absolute minimum of leisure time (even on Sundays).
305) The analogy between the predestination of the few (which is, in human terms, “unjust”) and the distribution of wealth (which is equally unjust, but equally willed by God) is very clear. (See, for example, Hoornbeek, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 153). Moreover (see Baxter, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 380), poverty is very often seen as a symptom of sinful sloth.
306) As Thomas Adams (Works of the Puritan Divines, p. 158) also says, God probably allows so many people to remain poor because he knows that they would be unable to resist the temptations that wealth brings with it. For all too often wealth drives religion out of a man.
307) Similar phenomena have occurred in England too, where, for example, a form of Pietism existed which, in accordance with Law’s Serious Call (1728), preached poverty, chastity, and—originally—isolation from the world.
308) Baxter’s work in the community of Kidderminster, which on his arrival was in a state of complete moral decline, was almost uniquely successful in the history of pastoral care, and is at the same time a typical example of how asceticism educated the masses to labor, or, to use Marxist terminology, to the production of “surplus value,” and thus for the first time made possible their utilization in the capitalist labor relationship (putting out industry, weaving). In general, there is a causal relationship here.
For his part, Baxter used the adaptation of his charges to the workings of capitalism in the service of his religious and ethical interests. In terms of the development of capitalism, these interests were used in the service of the development of the capitalist “spirit.”
309) One more thing: there may be some doubt about the significance, as a psychological factor [psychologisches agens], of the “pleasure” taken by the medieval craftsman in “what he had created” (about which we hear so much). No doubt there was something in the idea. But however that may be, asceticism divested work of this earthly delight (which in any case capitalism has now destroyed forever). Its raison d’être was now found in the life to come. Work in a calling as such was willed by God. Whereas today work is impersonal in nature, lacking either pleasure or meaning (from the point of view of the individual), at that time it was still transformed in a religious sense. In its early days, capitalism needed workers who were willing to subject themselves to economic exploitation for the sake of their conscience.
310) We shall show in another context the Puritan origins of even those components which have not yet been traced back to their religious roots, namely, the saying “honesty is the best policy” and the discussion on credit.
311) Beautifully analyzed in Bielschowsky’s Goethe, vol. 2, chap. 18.
At the conclusion of his “Blütezeit der deutschen Philosophie” (volume 2 of the Geschichte der neueren Philosophie), Windelband has expressed a related idea regarding the development of the scientific “cosmos.”
312) Saints’ Everlasting Rest, chap. 12.
313) “Couldn’t the old man retire on his $75,000 a year? No! The front of the store must be extended to a width of 400 feet. Why? That beats everything, he thinks.12 In the evenings, when his wife and daughters are reading together, he longs for bed. On Sundays he looks at the clock every five minutes—he can’t wait for the day to finish. What a wasted life!” With these words the (immigrant) son-in-law of this leading “dry-good-man”13 (of German descent) from a city in Ohio summed up his opinion of his father-in-law—an opinion that would undoubtedly have seemed to the “old man” totally incomprehensible and a symptom of German lassitude.
314) The present sketch has deliberately restricted itself to the circumstances in which the influence of religious consciousness on “material” civilization [Kulturleben] is truly beyond doubt. It would have been a simple matter to go on to create a formal “construction” in which, by a process of logical deduction, every “characteristic” feature of modern civilization [Kultur] is seen to derive from Protestant rationalism. But only a dilettante, for whom the “social psyche” is a “unity” that can be reduced to a single formula, would adopt this approach.
It should merely be noted that of course the development of capitalism in the period preceding that which we have been considering was in every respect affected by Christian influences, some of which hindered this development while others favored it. The question of the nature of these influences must be reserved for a later chapter. Whether any of the problems touched on above can be discussed within the framework of this journal is uncertain, given its particular scope. But the idea of writing weighty tomes that would have to rely so heavily on the theological and historical work of other scholars holds few attractions for me.
EDITORS’ NOTES
1. Presumably, this mention of space saving refers to the main body of text!
2. See here in this volume.
3. The word reserve is in English in the original.
4. The term standard work is in English in the original.
5. This title, which appears somewhat illogical in the German, could be translated as “Socrates, or an honest account of various important truths which, while not unknown, have suffered from neglect.”
6. The phrase captains of industry is in English in the original.
7. The word uprightness is in English in the original
8. This translates as “You must deny yourself.”
9. This translates as “You must make profits.”
10. Weber is here quoting in English from the seventeenth-century Quaker writings.
11. The word vanity is in English in the original.
12. The expression That beats everything is given in English.
13. The term dry-good-man is given in English.
“Churches” and “Sects” in North America
An ecclesiastical and sociopolitical sketch
Editors’ Preface: “‘Churches’ a
nd ‘Sects’ in North America” is one of Weber’s more exuberant essays. Composed shortly after he returned from America, it combines vivid firsthand observation—the evocative description of adult baptism in North Carolina is a memorable highlight—with the famous distinction between “churches” (inclusive, obligatory organizations which minister to all that have been born into them, faithful and reprobate alike) and “sects” (exclusive, voluntary communities of the religiously qualified). Weber argued that sects like the Quakers, with their insistence on the priority of God over man, and of individual conscience over state authority, were powerful vehicles of modern autonomy and freedom.
The essay appeared in Die Christliche Welt1 and reworked an earlier version that Weber penned for the German liberal newspaper, the Frankfurter Zeitung. In a final metamorphosis, the article became “The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism” and was published in the first volume of his Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion (1920). It can be found in the anthology, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited and translated by Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. We have chosen to translate the Christliche Welt version because of its close relationship to The Protestant Ethic of 1905 and because of its prominence in Weber’s rebuttals of Felix Rachfahl.
For the context of the essay translated below, and for the twist it gives to the more famous argument in The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism, see the Introduction, pp. xiiiff.
1
Only the most superficial visitor to the United States could fail to notice the strong growth of community life within the Church there. The permeation by the Church of the whole of life, however, which was an integral part of true “Americanism,” is today everywhere being undermined by rapid Europeanization. An example of the strange compromises to which this process can lead may be seen in the following statutory regulation of one of Chicago’s two universities:
Firstly, failure to meet the attendance requirement at chapel,2 which is compulsory for students on pain of relegation, can be “made up for” by attendance at certain additional lectures in excess of the required minimum. Secondly, for anyone who has demonstrably exceeded the required “chapel record” (sic!), whether by actual attendance or extra lectures, in one period of study, these opera supererogationis may count toward subsequent periods.
In conversation with Europeans, the “modern,” or would-be modern, American gradually becomes embarrassed when the subject turns to matters relating to the Church in his country. However, such embarrassment is a recent phenomenon for the genuine Yankee, and the “secularization” of life has still not gone very deep within Anglo-American circles. The exclusiveness of these circles, and—as we hope to show here—part of their superiority in the struggle for existence, rests on these “remnants.” In fact, it is almost an understatement3 to talk of “remnants” when we are dealing with what remains one of the most powerful elements in their whole conduct of life [Lebensführung], an element which affects their life in a way that must seem to us grotesque and frequently repellent.
German-American families, who have lived for more than a generation in Brooklyn, which, unlike “New York proper,” is regarded as “pious,” still have problems when it comes to forming more intimate relations with the old-established residents. Among these problems is how to give a satisfactory, as opposed to a merely “formal,” answer to the inevitable question: To what church do you belong? Even today it is perfectly normal for a land speculator, wishing to see his sites occupied, to build a “church,” that is, a wooden shed with a tower, looking for all the world like something out of a box of toys, and to employ a young graduate just out of a seminary run by some denomination or other for five hundred dollars as its pastor. He will come to an agreement, spoken or unspoken, that this position will be a lifelong post provided only that he can soon succeed in “preaching the building sites full.” And usually he does succeed.
The private statistical surveys available to us4 show well below one-tenth (about one-thirteenth) of the population as having “no religious affiliation.” This is in a country where there is a constitutional ban on official recognition of any church. It is not even permitted to compile official statistics of religious affiliation, as any official inquiry regarding one’s religious denomination is considered unconstitutional. Furthermore, it must be appreciated that the concept of “belonging” to a church community means something quite different from what it means for us, even from the material point of view. For instance, unskilled dockworkers and lumberjacks belonging to a Protestant church in the Buffalo region each give over eighty marks annually in regular contributions. This is in addition to the extremely numerous collections that are vital to support the pastor and the church itself.
The question concerning church affiliation, officially frowned upon, but privately still highly significant, is on par with the Homeric question regarding place of birth and parentage, as a German nose and throat specialist, who had opened a practice in Cincinatti, discovered. On asking his first patient what was ailing him, the very first thing the man said, to the utter astonishment of the doctor, was: I am from the Second Baptist Church in X Street. This piece of information, of course, had no bearing on the etiology of his nasal condition, as the puzzled doctor realized. The real purpose of the statement was to convey something different, which was not without interest for the doctor, namely: “Don’t worry about your fee!”
Membership of a church community “of good repute” (according to American criteria) guarantees the good standing of the individual, not only socially, but also, and especially, in terms of business. “Sir,” said an older gentleman who was a commercial traveler for Undertakers’ Hardware (iron tombstone lettering), with whom I spent some time in Oklahoma, “as far as I am concerned, everyone can believe what he likes, but if I discover that a client doesn’t go to church, then I wouldn’t trust him to pay me fifty cents: Why pay me, if he doesn’t believe in anything?” This is an immensely vast and sparsely settled land, where people are often on the move, where there is an excessively formal Anglo-Norman legal system, where the law of seizure and impounding [Exekutionsrecht] is lax and, indeed, has practically ceased to exist, thanks to homestead privileges granted to the mass of farmers in the West. In such a land, it was inevitable that personal credit would have to be supported on the crutches of a church guarantee of creditworthiness like this. In the same way, in the Middle Ages it was the bishops who were the first fully creditworthy debtors, because papal excommunication threatened them, should they default on payment for no good reason. A more recent example is the huge system of credit, which, in my student days, practically did away with the necessity for a Heidelberg “fraternity” student [Kouleurstudent] to keep a “cash reserve” for his living expenses. As soon as the freshman “won his colors,” his creditors would release his student registration (which at that time they were permitted to seize). Or take that highly questionable credit which the German lieutenant receives because his colonel has the power to take action against him. Such creditworthiness also rests on that (real or imagined) significance of “social guarantees”: the borrower’s whole life in society is based on membership of the community which, in return, guarantees his creditworthiness.
So it is too, to the highest degree, with the American church member. In a country like the United States, where the various associations [Zweckverbände]5 differ little from one another, the most fundamental and universal community, the religious congregation, embraces almost all “social” interests that take the individual out of his own front door. The local church offers not only edifying lectures, tea evenings, Sunday school, and every kind of charity event, but also a whole variety of athletic activities, football training, and the like. Details of these events are even announced at the end of Sunday service. Anyone who is excluded from the church for dishonorable conduct—as used to happen—or—as now—is tacitly deleted from its membership list, falls victim to a kind of social ostracism; anyone who is outsid
e the church community is deprived of social contacts. Of course, these effects have been weakened, not just by modern developments in general, but also by the rampant competition between the denominations to win converts. But in spite of the general decline in the influence of religious factors, the guarantee of reliability in business that comes with church membership remains significant.
Any number of “orders” and clubs of every conceivable kind have now started to take over some of the functions of the religious community. There is hardly a small businessman with ambitions who does not wear some badge in his buttonhole. But the original model for these formations, all of which serve to guarantee the “respectability” of the individual, remains the church community. However—and it is important to emphasize this point in a few words at this stage—this function is most fully developed in those communities that are “sects” in the particular sense of the word, which we are about to explore.
I personally first fully became aware of this one cold October Sunday, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, as I witnessed a service of Believers’ Baptism. About ten persons, both men and women, fully dressed, stepped one after another into the icy water of the mountain stream, where the reverend, all in black, was standing up to his waist in water. After a lengthy expression of commitment, they bent their knees, leaned back on his arm until their faces were submerged in the water, and reemerged spluttering and shivering, whereupon they were congratulated by the farmers, crowds of whom had turned up on horseback or in wagons, and were speedily driven home—although some of them lived several hours’ journey away. It was faith that preserved them from catching cold, they said. I had been taken there from his farm by one of my cousins, who watched the process while disrespectfully spitting over his shoulder (in keeping with his German origins, he had no church affiliation!). His interest was aroused, however, when an intelligent-looking young man underwent the procedure: Oh see: Mr. X! I told you so! When asked to explain himself, he at first simply answered: “Mr. X intended to open a bank in Mount Airy and needed a substantial loan.” Further explanation revealed that admission into the Baptist church was so important not so much on account of the potential Baptist clientele but rather to attract non-Baptist clients. This was because the thorough scrutiny of the candidate’s moral and business conduct [Lebensführung] that preceded admission—I couldn’t help thinking of our scrutiny of applicants for reserve officer—was regarded as by far the most rigorous and reliable of its kind. The slightest unpunctuality in the payment of a debt, careless expenditure, frequenting the tavern—in short, anything that cast a shadow on the business qualification of the man in question—would lead to his being rejected by the local church community. Once he has been voted in, the sect will accompany him for the rest of his life in everything he does. If he moves to a different town, it will provide him with the testimonial without which he will not be accepted in the local church of his “denomination.” If he should find himself in financial difficulties for which he bears no blame, the sect will attempt to “help him out,” to protect its reputation. In fact, this practice is now on the decline among sects, although it is still found in numerous “orders.”
