The Decline of Calvinism: An Approach to Its Study

Abstract

One of the major themes in the intellectual history of the Western world has been the rise and fall of Calvinism. A militant and crusading ideology during the Reformation era, Calvinism was nevertheless showing signs of losing its expansive force by the time of the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) and the Restoration of the English monarchy (1660). Before much longer, the inner conviction of Calvinist adherents as well as their determination to impose their beliefs upon others somehow faltered. Despite periodic ‘revivals’ such as the Great Awakening of the 1740s in the British colonies, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were, for the most part, a time of gradual weakening for the Calvinist impulse. This weakening was by no means uniform; it occurred at different rates among different groups of people. (Indeed, even in the mid-twentieth century, a virtually undiluted Calvinism remains a powerful force in at least one part of the world: Afrikaans-speaking South Africa.)

A neglected gap in the Weber thesis? The long economic lag of capitalism from Protestantism

“…This statement apparently admits that modern capitalism displays a long and relevant economic lag behind Calvinism and its foundational dogma of predestination within their causal chain and in that sense a large discrepancy in social time between the two within the Weber thesis. The question which arises is whether or not it is correct to assume a causal chain between 19th century industrial capitalism, let alone that Weber witnesses in Puritan America and non-Calvinist Germany 29 (Ay and Dolphin, 1994), Calvinism, at least its defining doctrine of predestination, as being virtually dead (Bouma, 1947;Miller, 1940;Ward, 1881), sunk like Atlantis (Fullerton, 30 1928), doomed (Hollinger, 1980), or suffering fall (Howe, 1972).…”

“…Counterfactually, if such a causal chain existed, industrial capitalism would be causally impacted by Calvinism and thus emerged and expanded directly following the eruption and social contagion of the Calvinist Revolution and the Protestant Reformation overall during the 16th century rather than the late 18th and especially 19th centuries. The latter is precisely the time when orthodox Calvinism as a theological system becomes in Weber's diagnosis a caput mortuum, suffering decline and ultimately demise (Dombrowski, 2001;Friedman, 2011;Hollinger, 1980;Howe, 1972). Notably, Weber uses caput mortuum for the central dogma of predestination as the presumed religious basis, via the resulting hyper-ascetic ethics of calling, of modern capitalism's spirit and system.…”

“…This implies that no direct, immediate, and effective causal chain may exist between Calvinism as the factor and modern capitalism as the aggregate outcome, but at most the indirect, fortuitous, and extremely delayed, and consequently distorted effect of the first on the second. It may be dubious to assume that an economic spirit and system mostly emerging during the late 18th century and expanding over the 19th century is in a direct and effective manner causally impacted by a religion arising and diffusing during the 16th century and, in Weber's diagnosis, atrophying (Friedman, 2011;Howe, 1972) precisely at the time of the birth of its assumed result. Presumably solving this problem consists, as typical for causal propositions, in assuming lagged effects of a prior independent on a later dependent variable, of Calvinism on modern capitalism even if the time lag between the presumed cause and effect is several centuries.…”

The Rise of 19th-Century American Spiritualism, 1854-1873

“…At the same time, evolving religious views decreased the imagined distance between heaven and earth and made Spiritualist claims of contact between the two more credible (Carroll 1997:2–3; Emmons 2003:59). This change in religious views was least apparent in the Southeast states because industrialization and urbanization affected the region less and “an intellectual blockade … set up to protect slavery helped insulate [traditional] theology from criticism.” By the mid‐19th century, however, in the northern tier of states, all but the lower middle class (small farmers and artisans) had largely rejected the traditional teaching that individuals could do nothing to earn their own salvation (Howe 1972:307–21). As a result, even for those who remained in orthodox churches, religion became largely a matter of moral behavior by which adults could earn a place in heaven and of personal devotion to a loving God who would find a way to save even unbaptized children (Rabinowitz 1989:xv–xxxi, 157).…”

Experience and Ideas: Education for Universalism in Eighteenth-Century Scotland

“…The third section of the study examines this possibility by considering in detail the workings of the elementary schools and universities of eighteenth-century Scotland. The universalism of the Scottish Enlightenment is not a randomly chosen illustration of the general thesis about experience and ideas. The Scottish Enlightenment may or may not have been "one of the major sources of contemporary Western culture" (Phillipson 1973: 125), but understanding its development is essential in confronting what Daniel Walker Howe (1972) has rightly seen as the widely neglected problem of "the decline of Calvinism." For nearly two centuries after the Reformation, Scotland was the "Calvinist society par excellence .…”