Among Israel’s Haredim, there is an ongoing debate about how to balance the ideal of full-time Torah study for men with the practical pressures in favor of encouraging men to join the workforce. This debate, naturally, has serious implications for the future of the Jewish state.
Among American Protestants, especially evangelicals, there is a very different debate going on about work which involves different approaches to what Max Weber famously called the “Protestant work ethic.” Reviewing a recent book on the subject, David Bahnsen has much to say that should be of interest to Jews, and other non-Calvinists—and not only about how narrowminded but trendy thinking about race, gender, and class can derail even intelligent analysts. Bahnsen argues that “a defense of a free and commercial society must be inextricably connected to a morally enlightened sentiment” that rests ultimately on a religious view of the human condition:
An economic worldview rooted in biblical anthropology is not amoral, it is not neutral on matters of incentive and knowledge, and it is not committed to impersonal or atomistic forces. While many of the conclusions reached by market-economy advocates may be compatible with [Friedrich Hayek’s ideas about economic freedom], the premises behind Christian efforts to extract beliefs and commitments in matters of social cooperation and a commercial society are entirely different from the secular humanism underlying much of contemporary capitalism.
More about: American Religion, Capitalism, Christianity, Economic freedom
