Junghalli wrote:I wrote:he wrote:Why isn't Germany, the homeland of Calvinism, so 'cut-throat capitalism'?
Why isn't Switzerland, which existed under a Calvinist dictatorship in the 17th century, so 'cut-throat capitalism'?
Who actually said this? They're totally wrong. Germany is in no sense the homeland of Calvinism--Calvinism doesn't have a homeland. John Calvin, alias Jean Chauvin, was a Frenchman who formulated his ideas while in Switzerland, and won most of his congregations in Switzerland, France, and the Netherlands. Only about half of Switzerland embraced Calvinism; a smaller proportion of French did so and were eventually defeated and finally altogether expelled from the country, and the Netherlands was the only major state to fully embrace Calvinism. As for Germany, Calvinism is simply not half as influential on German history as Lutheranism and Catholicism; although initially there were a number of Calvinist communities in Germany, the Lutherans and Catholics sort of cooperated against the Calvinists and they became a definite minority.
And of course, Switzerland was never under a Calvinist dictatorship, and the very idea is frankly ludicrous considering the confederated and heterogeneous nature of Switzerland during the 17th century. As a little hint, Switzerland has never even had a dictatorship, and I think the closest they've ever got is groups of oligarchs becoming politically dominant, or one group of cantons enforcing their will on another.
One canton, Geneva, was run by John Calvin himself as a Calvinist state for a period in the
16th century, which is probably what your poster was thinking about. But really, those statements are really quite wrong. I don't know what books your opponent there has been reading, but they probably have more pictures than words.
This isn't really much of an argument, as I never said Calvinism was the big factor, I said it was one of many factors. Perhaps Germany and Switzerland aren't so capitalist because some of the other factors weren't present?
It's more likely due to factors that existed in Europe than to ones that were new to America, like preexisting political and social structures, scarcity of land and resources, etc. The European Calvinists had a great deal of historical continuity with their past before the Reformation, not to mention geographic continuity. The Puritans were founding a new country in a (allegedly) virgin land, and they were a religious group by definition, so their Calvinism had a lot more room to work, and a lot more influence in their worldview.
