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Re: IT IS! IT IS! IT'S THE INDUSTRIAL RELIGION!



David C. Larkin wrote:
 
> Actually, Martin Luther established a new form of Christianity that
> was based upon faith not works.  The Roman Church at the time was
> teaching that salvation was by works.  Martin Luther rebelled against
> that idea and taught that man is saved by grace through faith, not by
> works lest man could boast of his salvation through his works.
> Although Luther was a predestinarian, perhaps it was Calvin's doctrine
> of predestination that caused men to seek to prove that they were
> included among the saved by their industriousness.  However, you have
> to consider the Enlightenment, and, as Peter Gay, Yale enlightenment
> historian calls it, the rise of paganism, not a "new Christianity"
> that really made it possible for the "industrial religion" to take
> hold.

Hi David,
It took a lot of dialog and research to try and pick the right
words here. For example, if Luther established "Protestantism",
and  Protestantism ultimately came to be based upon works, etc.

Here are the references from my web site which I did not post:

-----------------------------------------------------------

Willis Harman, GLOBAL MIND CHANGE;
        Knowledge Systems, 1988   ISBN 0-941705-05-6
"Nicolas Copernicus established mathematically that the Earth
 moves around the sun in On the Revolution of the Celestial
 Spheres" [p. 5]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Lewis Mumford, THE PENTAGON OF POWER
        Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1964   ISBN 0-15-671610-0
"If there is any one point at which one may say the modern
 world picture was first conceived as the expression of a new
 religion and the basis of a new power system, it was in the
 fifth decade of the sixteenth century."  [p. 29]
". . . it was by such close observation of planetary movements,
as well as by tedious mathematical calculation, that Tycho
Brahe confirmed Copernicus' conclusions and made possible
Kepler's final correction." [p. 31]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I. Bernard Cohen, THE BIRTH OF A NEW PHYSICS;
        Norton, 1985  ISBN 0-393-30045-5
"There were only two possibilities open:  One was to refuse
 to look through the telescope or to refuse to accept what one
 saw when one did;  the other was to reject the physics of
 Aristotle and the old geocentric astronomy of Ptolemy." [p. 78]

"In the contrast between Galileo's heroic stand when he tried
 to reform the cosmological basis of orthodox theology and his
 humbled, kneeling surrender when he disavowed his
 Copernicansim, we may sense the tremendous forces attendant
 on the birth of modern science." [p. 126]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Thomas Kuhn, THE COPERNICAN REVOLUTION;
        Harvard University Press, 1957   ISBN 0-674-17103-9
"But for whatever the reasons, the Church did, in 1616, make
 Copernicanism a doctrinal issue, and all the worst excesses of
 the battle against the earth's motion -- the condemnation of
 Copernican opinions, the recantation and 'imprisonment' of
 Galileo, and the dismissal and banishment of prominent
 Catholic Copernicans -- occurred in or after that year." [p. 199]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Erich Fromm, TO HAVE OR TO BE;
        Bantam, 1977 ISBN 0-553-27485-6
"Luther established a purely patriarchal form of Christianity
 in Northern Europe that was based on the urban middle class
 and the secular princes.  The essence of this new social
 character is submission under patriarchal authority, with
 work as the only way to obtain love and approval.
  [See reviewer's comments on Luther below.]

"Behind the Christian facade arose a new secret religion,
 'industrial religion,' that is rooted in the character
 structure of modern society, but is not recognized as
 'religion.'  The industrial religion is incompatible with
 genuine Christianity. It reduces people to servants of the
 economy and of the machinery that their own hands build.

"The industrial religion had its basis in a new social
 character. Its center was fear of and submission to powerful
 male authorities, cultivation of the sense of guilt for
 disobedience, dissolution of the bonds of human solidarity by
 the supremacy of self-interest and mutual antagonism.  The
 'sacred' in industrial religion was work, property, profit,
 power, even though it furthered individualism and freedom
 within the limits of its general principles.  By transforming
 Christianity into a strictly patriarchal religion it was
 still possible to express the industrial religion in
 Christian terminology." [p.p. 131-132]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Max Weber, THE PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM
        Routledge, 1992   ISBN 0-415-08434-2
"[Capitalism] is associated with an outlook of a very specific
 kind:  the continual accumulation of wealth for its own sake,
 rather that for the material rewards that it can serve
 to bring.  'Man is dominated by the making of money, by
 acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life.  Economic
 acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means
 for satisfaction of his material needs.'  This according to
 Weber, is the essence of the spirit of modern capitalism."

"The entrepreneurs associated with the development of rational
 capitalism combine the impulse to accumulation with a
 positively frugal life-style.  Weber finds the answer in
 the 'this-worldly asceticism' of Puritanism, as focused
 through the concept of 'calling'.  The notion of the calling,
 according to Weber, did not exist either in Antiquity or in
 Catholic theology;  it was introduced by the Reformation."
 [p. xii]

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

REVIEWER'S COMMENTS ON LUTHER:
 Luther taught a very strong concept of "calling," but not
 quite in the same way as the Puritans.  For Luther, calling
 meant that all professions were equal in the sight of God,
 and that God was as glorified through a candlemaker creating
 high quality candles as he was through a priest or monk.  His
 focus was breaking down the clergy/laity distinction in
 medieval Catholicism for a doctrine he called the "priesthood
 of all believers".

 The creation of a merchant class and the later Industrial
 Revolution led to what Weber is talking about.  The Puritans
 took this concept of calling and eventually concluded that
 since good Christians worked hard for the glory of God, good
 Christians were wealthy Christians.  Therefore, wealth was a
 sign of God's favor.  John Wesley (who was actually an
 Arminian Methodist rather than a Calvinist, but he fits in
 with Weber's thesis very well) realized that if people
 followed the Methodist spiritual practice of hard work and
 thrift, they would soon become very wealthy.  This worried
 him greatly, and he always exhorted his followers to "Make
 all you can, save all you can, so that you can give all you
 can."   Wesley himself lived by this rule and died poor,
 though he made a considerable amount of wealth in his
 lifetime. His followers, unfortunately, conveniently forgot
 about this point.               "Russ Reeves" <russr@pe.net>



References: