Demeulenaere, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001 1.3 Economic Attitudes This raises the interesting question of what gave the great religious traditions a rationalizing potentiality even if it was only fully realized in one case. Ernest Gellner made the interesting suggestion that there were elements in all the great traditions, Islam in particular, that might have led to a Protestant-like breakthrough, but that a combination of fortuitous circumstances in Western Europe made it possible for it to occur there ( 1988). Since Weber's time there has been a search for functional equivalents of Protestantism in other traditions that prepared some societies better than others and some groups in some societies better than others for the transition to capitalism, or, perhaps better, to modernity (Bellah 1957, Eisenstadt 1968). Thus Protestantism, though occurring in only one tradition, played, indirectly but crucially, a developmental role cross culturally, and thus can legitimately be considered an instance of religious evolution.
Once established, however, capitalism became a worldwide phenomenon, even though taking different forms in different civilizational areas. Never before the Reformation in the West was the hold of agrarian society, organized through patrimonial (including patrimonial bureaucratic) and feudal political forms, broken through. However, it is clear from the place of the Protestant ethic argument in Economy and Society ( 1921–1922/ 1978) and in the Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie ( 1920–1921) that Weber believed that ascetic Protestantism was an indispensable catalyst for the emergence of a new form of society, which he called modern capitalism. At first glance, it might seem that this book is simply a developmental history focusing on a dramatic change within a single religious tradition. Weber began his study of religion with his famous The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Caplitalism ( 1904–1905/1930).
Bellah, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001 2 The Protestant Ethic
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