{"id":2887,"date":"2020-02-24T17:31:34","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T17:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/?p=2887"},"modified":"2020-02-24T21:02:23","modified_gmt":"2020-02-24T21:02:23","slug":"the-evangelical-ethic-and-the-spirit-of-escapism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/the-evangelical-ethic-and-the-spirit-of-escapism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Evangelical Ethic and the Spirit of Escapism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\nWhile growing up in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, being evangelisch<\/em> meant above all that you were not katholisch<\/em> and therefore had to wait five years longer for your Confirmation presents. This was a little annoying, but in hindsight, it may qualify as my first encounter with the inner-worldly asceticism that Max Weber describes in The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism<\/em>. Delayed gratification aside, the German evangelical church at the time came across as benign, even reasonable, open to critical discussion and staffed with laid-back, progressive pastors. It was the seventies after all. Nobody would have spelled evangelical with a capital \u201cE\u201d back then, at least not in Europe. That Protestantism in the US could take on a very different flavor didn\u2019t occur to me until I moved to California in the early 2000s and it was my daughter\u2019s turn for Confirmation class. There was a lot about Satan in the curriculum and all the things you could go to hell for, like not showing up for class at Bethany Lutheran Church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Satan, really? Back then, the last time I had heard of him was also in the seventies, in a movie theater watching Rosemary\u2019s Baby<\/em>. Recently, he has been making more headlines, like earlier this year, when the spiritual advisor to the White House and televangelist Paula White prayed for \u201call Satanic pregnancies to miscarry right now.\u201d And then earlier this month, when Billy Graham\u2019s son Franklin was barred from speaking in the UK about how \u201cSatan managed to pass gay marriage legislation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Max Weber traveled through the US in 1904 to study the sociology of religion. Interestingly, Protestants at the time seemed less obsessed with the underworld and more interested in worldly affairs. Weber praised the progressive dynamics of America\u2019s many \u201cvoluntaristic sects.\u201d He was impressed by their independence and self-governance and saw them operating as social and economic networks, which, due to their Protestant work ethic, were thriving in a capitalist society. Protestant revival movements like Christian Science, still new at the time and preaching that sickness was a mental error curable by reading the right books, did strike him as odd. However, always the self-assured German professor, Weber predicted that these spiritual aberrations would be swept away by cultural rationalization, secularization and bureaucratization. This, after all, was based on his theory of modern Western society, where scientific understanding replaces belief systems and mythical explanations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Max Weber in 1894, the year he was appointed professor of economics at Albert-Ludwigs-Universit\u00e4t Freiburg. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Maybe Weber loved his theory a little bit too much. He would be surprised to find out that instead of becoming rational, disenchanted or versachlicht, <\/em>almost a third of the US population today identifies as Evangelical and interprets the Bible as a literally true account of the past and unfailing guide to the future. This gets particularly tricky when it comes to the Book of Revelation, which contains all the Evangelicals\u2019 pet themes. Martin Luther found the Apocalypse of John \u201cneither prophetic nor apostolic\u201d and tried to keep it out of the biblical canon. Thomas Jefferson considered the steaming stories about Satan and the Antichrist \u201cravings of a maniac.\u201d He was particularly disturbed by the promise of a Golden Age on Earth, lasting one thousand years and reserved for faithful Christians who would be spared the preceding \u201cGreat Tribulation\u201d by temporarily escaping into Heaven. I find it disturbing too \u2014 the last time somebody in Germany promised one thousand years of Paradise, it turned out to be twelve years of hell and Holocaust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where does this knack for escapist belief systems in the United States comes from? I guess probably from the very beginning. Sailing to America in 1620 was perfect timing if you wanted to take with you an untainted love for bizarre theological certainties such as the coming 1000-year reign of Jesus Christ. The Pilgrims boarded the Mayflower when the rest of Europe was about to begin a 30-year massacre over whose faith was the right faith. It left half the population dead and the other half with a soberer attitude towards the benefits of religion and rampant self-righteousness. The early Americans missed out on that experience, and unabashed Puritanism survived through the centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evangelicalism, as we know it today, took off in the 1950s, and Billy Graham played a big role in it. So did TV and later the Internet. In Minnesota, where I live now, one doesn\u2019t need devices to get the gospel, a car will do. When I first moved here twelve years ago, giant billboards on the roadside were merely insisting that Jesus was alive \u201cbeyond a reasonable doubt.\u201d Recently, however, the signs have begun to target evolution by showing quotes from the Book of Genesis plastered over photos of planet Earth and by openly discriminating against primates and their developmental potential. I wish animal rights groups would take GospelBillboards.org<\/em><\/a> to court for that! Every time I am commuting on highway 35 between the University of Minnesota Duluth and Twin Cities campuses, I get reminded that Weber\u2019s theory of unstoppable Enlightenment in Western societies is, well, just a theory. What if pastors of any denomination in the US were required, like in other countries, to study theology at a comprehensive university as opposed to stand-alone, obscure seminaries? Teaching that Earth and all creatures on it were created 6,000 years ago becomes more challenging when your colleague next door is a professor of biology. You\u2019d also think twice as a student before believing it when you are surrounded by a diverse group of people and opinions and not just like-minded followers. For now, however, we have to sadly recognize that to a large swath of people in America, the world remains what Max Weber called \u201can enchanted garden\u201d from which in the not too distant future they will be lifted off into the clouds. Satan, if he existed, would laugh his tail off.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Henning Schroeder is a former vice provost and dean of graduate education at the University of Minnesota. He\u2019s at schro601@umn.edu. On Twitter: @HenningSchroed1.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While growing up in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, being evangelisch meant above all that you were not katholisch and therefore had to wait five years longer for your Confirmation presents. This was a little annoying, but in hindsight, it may qualify as my first encounter with the inner-worldly asceticism that Max Weber describes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2081,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96814],"tags":[248,42],"class_list":["post-2887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections","tag-germany","tag-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2081"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2887"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2891,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2887\/revisions\/2891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}