described this mix of hard work and the moral imperative to save rather than
consume as ‘worldly asceticism’, contrasting it with Catholicism (and other
religions) which sought to go beyond worldly morality in otherworldly medi-
tation and monastic contemplation.
Many scholars disagree with the Weber thesis. There is no single ‘Protestant
ethic’. In its early years Protestantism was radical and anti-establishment but
by the eighteenth century had built a structure as rigid as that of medieval
Catholicism, so any explanation relying on religious liberty was only valid for
a limited period (Wallerstein, 1974). Richard Tawney in his 1926 book
Religion and the Rise of Capitalismrejected the link between Protestantism
and the rise of capitalism,arguing instead that economic growth in England
took off in the sixteenth century as the influence of religion declined and was
replaced by secular-scientific attitudes. Others have argued it was not the
declining influence of religion but rather the absence of religion from all
matters economic that was crucial. Scholars have found support for this in the
Bible,citing Jesus’dictum that people should ‘give unto Caesar that which
belongs to Caesar and give unto God that which belongs to God’. This separa-
tion of the human and the sacred marked a big difference between Christian
and non-Christian countries. Braudel argues that ‘unlike the West which
clearly separates the human from the sacred, the Far East makes no such
distinction. Religion is clearly involved with all aspects of human life: the
State,philosophy, ethics and social relations. All fully partake of the sacred;
and this is what gives them their perennial resistance to change’ (1984:169).
This distinction between the spiritual and secular enabled successive European
rulers, even before the fragmentation of the Catholic Church after the fifteenth
century, to resist the political ambitions of the Catholic papacy (Ferguson,
2012:60). Chapter 11 introduces the debate about how the resulting fragmen-
tation of Europe into diverse states may (or may not) have stimulated competi-
tion and long-run economic dynamism in Europe.
The empirical evidence is hard to come by. Weber noted that in the manu-
facturing centres of France and Western Germany Protestants were typically
the employers and in Switzerland Protestant cantons were the centres of manu-
facturing export industry and Catholic ones primarily agricultural. The only
numerical analysis Weber refers to is a study of the economic activities of
Catholics and Protestants in Baden in 1895 and the accuracy of these figures
has been questioned.
A more recent study looks at the comparative long-run economic perform-
ance of Catholic and Protestant Europe. After the mid-1550s the many princes
in fragmented Germany had the freedom to impose their preferred religious
denomination upon their subjects and for most principalities no more religious
changes took place after 1624. The choice of religion was imposed from above
which makes it easier to examine the impact of religion on economic outcomes
without having to consider questions of reverse causality (how economic
outcomes influenced religion). The choice of religion was not, for example,
influenced by more entrepreneurial cities choosing to become Protestant. The
256 Patterns and Determinants of Economic Growth