"How much is Weber's thesis on the Protestant ethic generalizable: in the sense that an other-worldly group, usually religious, breaks out into the wide world, and has a secular impact?
Your familiarity with historical examples may exceed mind; but today's Republican Right comes to mind. As does Islam: Mohammed was a prophet who wielded an Empire. The early Christians were an otherworldly sect. I'm sure there are examples in Jewish History. We can play a parlor game all night dreaming up examples. Perhaps Buddhism; which started from asceticism and which grew into (I think) Ashoka's Indian Empire and became a state religion in China. Have scholars before us investigated this line of thought?"
Your familiarity with historical examples may exceed mind; but today's Republican Right comes to mind. As does Islam: Mohammed was a prophet who wielded an Empire. The early Christians were an otherworldly sect. I'm sure there are examples in Jewish History. We can play a parlor game all night dreaming up examples. Perhaps Buddhism; which started from asceticism and which grew into (I think) Ashoka's Indian Empire and became a state religion in China. Have scholars before us investigated this line of thought?"
I don't know the answer. One would think Weber might have prompted specialists in a vareiety of historical and cultural fields to think about this. Does anyone have any idea?
If Bob Ackermann was correct to argue that religion has historically functioned as a critique of the status quo, then religious otherworldliness is a transitional stage in a potential transformation of a society.
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