Puritanism and the Spirit of Capitalism

Abstract

Calvinism as an historical movement was exceedingly complex. It was a phenomenon in which theology, economic theory, political philosophy, and a general cultural orientation were inextricably mixed and applied in an intense effort to refashion society into a Holy Commonwealth. In attempting to interpret this movement, as Sidney E. Mead has pointed out, “one is always in danger either of trying to do complete justice to the complexity and landing in a confusing incoherence and lack of clarity, or of seizing upon one interpretative theme in the interest of clarity and landing in over-simplification.” Most of the discussions of Calvinism, in any or all of its various manifestations, have avoided the first alternative—falling into the morass of confusion and incoherence—but many have succumbed to the second—an over-simplification that is definitely misleading.

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