In late 19th century Germany, the business leaders and owners of capital, not to mention the bulk of higher skilled workers and managers, were Protestant. Protestants also had higher levels of educational achievement than Catholics.

In the 1600s and 1700s, some Protestant towns and regions had thrown off the rule of the Catholic Church. The conventional wisdom was that, freed from a repressive regime controlling every aspect of their lives, they were able to pursue their economic interests and become rich.

In his classic essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904), sociologist Max Weber argued that the conventional wisdom was wrong.

It was the very laxness of the Church in terms of moral and societal rules that turned the urban middle classes against it. They actually welcomed a tyranny of Protestant control that would tightly regulate their attitudes and behavior.

A certain ethic grew linking moral righteousness with making money. It was not just that Protestants sought wealth more purposefully than Catholics, but that Protestants showed “a special tendency to develop economic rationalism”.

Protestants had an approach to creating wealth that was less focused on the gain of comfort than on the pursuit of profit itself. Long after all needs had been met, the capitalist sought greater profit for its own sake, as the symbol of more profound ends.

The satisfaction was not in the ability to buy things (which had always driven money-making in the past), but in wealth creation based on increased productivity and better use of God-given resources.

As reflected in its monasteries and convents, the Catholic spiritual ethic was to transcend the world, separating oneself from sins and temptations. The Protestant ethic involved living with your eyes on God but fully in the world.

Instead of business being an inferior quest compared to the holy life, the Protestant could be holy through their work.

Capitalistic enterprise was transformed from being simply a system of economic organization, to a domain of life infused with God.