Complete Book of Everyday Christianity
An A-Z guide to following Christ in every aspect of Life. Here in one book, is the complete guide you need for every part of your life—family, money, relationships, job, church, entertainment and more. The editors, Robert Banks and R. Paul Stevens, combine decades of ministry, scholarship, church leadership, parenting, and other sorts of practical wisdom.WORK ETHIC, PROTESTANT
We hear frequent mention of the Protestant work ethic, sometimes positively but more often negatively. Except in some scholarly circles the phrase does not have a precise meaning, and even there not everyone is in full agreement. Generally it refers to some of the following attitudes and behavior: (1) believing that work gives meaning to life; (2) having a strong sense of duty to one’s work; (3) believing in the necessity of hard work and of giving work (even before the family) the best of one’s time; (4) believing that work contributes to the moral worth of the individual and to the health of the social order; (5) viewing wealth as a major goal in life; (6) viewing leisure as earned by work and as preparation for work; (7) viewing success in work as resulting primarily from the amount of personal effort; (8) viewing wealth that accrues from work as a sign of God’s favor. Though writers might single out one or two of these characteristics for special attention, everyone seems to be confident that he or she knows what the term means.
Individual reactions to the term and what it stands for tend to be all positive or all negative. Some regret the passing or weakening of this traditional understanding of work and would like to see it reinstated. Others regard the gradual demise of the Protestant work ethic as liberating, for it raises the possibility of a more open and flexible approach to work that is better suited to people’s personal makeup and to current economic realities. An early depiction of conflict between these two attitudes is in the well-known play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. Later examples may be found in such popular sitcoms as All in the Family and Till Death Do Us Part. As we shall see, present understandings of the Protestant work ethic contain a strange blend of authentic and inauthentic elements. It is by telling the story of how a focus on the Protestant work ethic arose that we can begin to distinguish between them.
Major Interpretations of the Protestant Work Ethic
In the middle of the nineteenth century, Karl Marx insisted that the modern middle-class ethic owed its existence to material factors, such as the spread of capitalist forces of production and the division and exploitation of labor. Shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, sociologist Max Weber acknowledged the role of these factors but argued that the root of the work ethic lay further back in religious beliefs about calling, election and work stemming from John Calvin. These beliefs were further developed by such later Puritans as William Perkins and Richard Baxter and came to concrete expression in the approach of people like Benjamin Franklin. The unforeseen consequences of the Protestant perspective included a heightened sense of moral obligation to work, the conviction that a person’s election by God was authenticated by his or her achievements at work and the perceived importance of living thriftily off the proceeds from work, with the remainder being saved, invested or given away. R. H. Tawney popularized a modified version of Weber’s thesis. He argued that since the understanding of calling and pockets of capitalism had emerged before the Reformation, the work ethic was not a purely Protestant phenomenon. Also, it was not until the latter, largely post-Puritan, part of the seventeenth century that it developed the strong emphasis on individual success, rather than social obligations, which we associate with it. From this point on, though more closely connected with Nonconformists and Methodists, the work ethic took hold. So Puritanism was only partially responsible for it. Since Tawney wrote, other historians have suggested that the story is even more complex. For example, even where Protestantism held sway, there were significant differences between regions in their attitudes toward work. Even climatic conditions appear to have played a part.
Key Criticisms of the Main Interpretations
There are good grounds for arguing that what most people have in mind when they refer to the “Protestant work ethic” would be more accurately described as the “post-Protestant work ethic.” Calvin, following Luther, wrote in a time when ordinary work (when compared with monastic work) was devalued, and he was attempting to give work a new dignity before God, not insist on its centrality. In any case, his emphasis was on diligence in work and its usefulness to others, not on a preoccupation with work or on its personal significance. Calvin insisted on the importance of each person’s finding a place through work for his or her God-given gifts (or talents, a word whose meaning owes much to his influence) and of work as embodying and expressing the mutual dependence of people on each other, that is, as a concrete expression of human fellowship, solidarity and community. This also led Calvin to discern a connection between the general order of work in society and the provision of social justice to those in need.
Weber lumped together the views of Calvin and later Puritans, but Calvin’s followers began to move beyond his views in subtle ways. For example, many developed a greater interest in the use of time at work and in the link between fruitful work and the doctrine of divine assurance. After the Restoration, when Puritanism again became a minority position, certain Nonconformists and eighteenth-century Methodists (on whom Tawney places the major weight) gave greater attention to the importance of getting the most financially that a person can through work, though with a view to saving and responsibly investing it or giving it away (see Stewardship). Many also experienced solid work and its fruits as granting them upward social mobility, for which they were devoutly thankful to God.
The crucial differences in the development of the work ethic took place after this, occurring chiefly in the nominally religious, or early post-Protestant, attitudes that developed in the early days of the Industrial Revolution. In that period many people were gradually moving away from full dependence on the sufficiency of Christ’s work for their salvation and sanctification. Requiring some other ground on which to justify themselves-before God, before others and sometimes most of all before themselves-they began to look around for a replacement. The burgeoning and increasingly dynamic field of work was nearest at hand, at least for the emerging middle class. So work began to become invested with new significance.
In pre-Reformation days many people had sought to justify themselves and gain acceptance with God and others through religious works. This road was largely closed to Protestants, but their ordinary work was still available to them as a substitute. As this happened, work moved into a more central place, being viewed less as a context for serving others than as a context for human achievement and less as a divine calling than as a personal career. Work increasingly became the place where most of one’s time and energy was invested, throwing out of balance the relationship between work, family and leisure. The degree of success in one’s work, rather than a person’s full acceptance by God, increasingly determined a person’s status in the eyes of others. All of these attitudes are in basic conflict with the Protestant understanding of the gospel and vision of the Christian life.
Conclusion
In view of these criticisms, we cannot unreservedly regret the weakening of what is called the Protestant work ethic. Over the last two centuries it has become at best encrusted with, and at worst transformed into, something different from what it was originally. Also not everything said about the ethic by earlier Protestants was equally valid. For example, if Luther too rigidly tied people’s work to their existing station in life rather than to the particular gifts God had given them to use, later Puritans too rigidly identified people’s God-given vocation with work, at the expense of people’s other involvements and responsibilities. Frequently, with some illustrious exceptions including Calvin and many early Puritans, the vocation of rest alongside the vocation of work was not given its proper emphasis.
Even if we need to correct the earlier Protestant understanding of work and identify the secularized distortions that later crept in, the work ethic still preserves some genuine Protestant values. Among these we should include the virtue and dignity of work; the sanctity of all legitimate types of work; the importance of responsible work rather than slovenly work or idleness; the outcome of proper work-whether successful or not-as proceeding from a service to God and society. Other aspects of the original Protestant understanding of work need to be reclaimed: for example, its view of our work as part of our divine calling or vocation rather than as a personal career or just a job; its recognition of service to others, rather than self-fulfillment or even our own gifts, as the main guide to our choice and conduct of work; its assurance that God is well able to supply such fulfillment if we put the purposes of the kingdom above our personal preferences (compare Matthew 6:33); its refusal to regard work as what gives us our basic identity or meaning; its essentially communal, rather than individual,character; and its recognition of leisure as the foundation of work rather than requiring work for its justification. Taking all these characteristics into account, we can say, with the social commentator Daniel Yankelovich, that in some respects the work ethic is not so much overvalued as undervalued by too many people today. In other respects, far too much is made of it, and workaholic tendencies should be challenged wherever they arise.
References and Resources
S. N. Eisenstadt, The Protestant Ethic and Modernization (New York: Basic, 1968); A. Homes, “Wanted: A Work Ethic for Today,” The Reformed Journal 28 (October 1978) 17-20; M. J. Kitch, ed., Capitalism and the Reformation (New York: Longman, 1967); H. Lehmann and G. Roth, Weber’s Protestant Ethic: Origins, Evidence, Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); P. Marshall et al., Labor of Love: Essays on Work (Toronto: Wedge, 1980); L. Ryken, Work and Leisure in Christian Perspective (Portland, Ore.: Multnomah, 1987); R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: A Historical Study (London: Pelican, 1938); M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: The Relationship Between Religion and the Economic and Social Life in Modern Culture (New York: Scribner’s, 1958).
-Robert Banks
Originally published in The Complete Book of Everyday Christianity by Robert Banks and R. Paul Stevens. ©1997 by Robert Banks and R. Paul Stevens. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, USA. www.ivpress.com
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