Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Religious Preference And Worldly Success: A Comparison Of Protestants And Catholics, James W. Crowley

Student Work

The problem, of theory construction toward a sociological understanding of the religious-economic relationship has relied to a great extent upon the work of a German social scientist, Max Weber.¹ Historical observations made by Weber, which described a meaningful relationship between Protestantism and modern industrial capitalism,² stimulated scholars from a number of fields to continue investigation of this relationship. The Weberian thesis advanced the position that religious and economic phenomena within a society were mutually interdependent. More specifically, Weber was concerned with the 'economic ethics of a religion'³ in relation to the economic institution. This relationship was considered …