Protestantism’s Legacy and the Birth of Homo Economicus

Introduction

The Protestant Reformation’s most far-reaching legacy may not be its doctrinal disputes or ecclesial schisms, but its profound impact on how the human person is conceived in economic life. A growing body of scholarship and historical analysis suggests that the Reformation – especially the Calvinist or Puritan strand – helped give birth to the idea of homo economicus: the notion of humans as self-maximizing economic actors driven by rational calculation and individual gain . In other words, beyond fragmenting Western Christianity theologically, Protestantism (intentionally or not) cultivated a cultural ethic that reduced personhood to productivity and utility. The famed “Protestant work ethic,” as described by sociologist Max Weber, encouraged diligence, discipline, and frugality – virtues on the surface – but, when divorced from traditional Christian rhythms of worship and community, this ethic evolved into an idolatry of accumulation . Work itself became sanctified, not as a means of spiritual growth or service, but as an end in itself for the sake of material success. Over time, success and efficiency were elevated as signs of moral worth, and the spiritual goal of theosis (union with God) was eclipsed by an incessant drive for utility, productivity, and profit for their own sake.

In contrast, the classical Orthodox Christian vision offers a radically different understanding of labor and human purpose. In Eastern Christian thought, work (ergon) is synergia – a cooperative activity with God in the ongoing transformation and sanctification of the world . Rather than a relentless quest for personal gain, labor is meant to be integrated with liturgical life, family, and community, ordered toward communion with others and with God. When work becomes unmoored from this sacramental and communal context – when it is cut off from the liturgy, the feast, and the shared life of the parish – it devolves into mere toil, a drudgery that serves only worldly accumulation. This essay will explore how the Reformation’s theological shifts contributed to the rise of modern capitalist values, how the Protestant work ethic differs from the older Orthodox ethos of work, and how the reduction of human beings to producers and consumers (the homo economicus model) stands in stark opposition to the Christian understanding of persons as relational beings created for communion.

The Protestant Work Ethic: Sanctifying Accumulation

In 1905, Max Weber famously argued that the Protestant Reformation – particularly Calvinism – played a pivotal role in fostering the “spirit of capitalism” . According to Weber’s thesis, certain Protestant beliefs unwittingly encouraged a new attitude toward work and economic gain. Chief among these was the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, which taught that God had preordained who would be saved. An anxious question naturally arose: How might one know they are among the elect? Lacking the sacramental assurances of medieval Catholicism, many Calvinists came to view worldly success and prosperity as potential “signs” of God’s favor . Thus, consistent hard work, discipline, and economic success took on spiritual significance. Diligence in one’s calling and the accumulation of wealth (so long as accompanied by personal sobriety and frugality) were interpreted as indications of being blessed. The result, Weber observed, was an “inner-worldly asceticism” – a work ethic that encouraged constant industry and restraint from indulgence, thereby funneling earnings into further investment and growth . The rational pursuit of economic gain came to be perceived as laudatory, and the accumulation of wealth was connected positively with religious norms in a way that would have been foreign to earlier ages .

Under this emerging ethos, everyday labor was no longer just a necessity for survival or a mundane duty. It became a vocation and even a moral obligation. Protestant leaders from Martin Luther onward taught that one’s secular work could and should be a calling from God . Luther’s insistence on the priesthood of all believers and the sanctification of ordinary life flattened the medieval distinction between “sacred” and “profane” work. In Protestant theology, the work of a peasant, merchant, or mother could be as holy as that of a monk or priest – provided it was done diligently and for God’s glory. As the Protestant work ethic took hold, worldly work came to be seen as a duty to both individual and society, a way to serve God by being productive . The traditional Catholic notion of performing “good works” (prayer, charity, pilgrimage, etc.) as a supplement to faith was effectively transformed. Instead of emphasizing works of mercy or communal worship as signs of faith, Protestants (especially Calvinists and Puritans) emphasized relentless labor and thrift as the evidence of one’s stewardship and election . As Weber put it, Protestants came to regard consistent hard work and frugality as important applications of being a steward of God’s gifts, “a sign of grace” in one’s life .

While this emphasis on industriousness and stewardship had positive aspects (encouraging education, commerce, and a sense of responsibility), it also carried a dangerous spiritual trade-off. The “Protestant work ethic,” stripped of the older sacramental context, effectively sanctified not God, but accumulation. Increasingly, the measure of a person’s worth became their success, efficiency, and productivity. Utility (usefulness in producing material results) was idolized as a virtue. Over time, this ethic fed directly into what economists would later dub the concept of homo economicus – the idea that the rational human being is one who maximizes utility and profit. In economic theory, homo economicus is described as a consistently rational and narrowly self-interested agent, who always acts to maximize personal benefit (maximizing utility as a consumer and profit as a producer) . This cold calculus of self-interest was mirrored in the emerging culture of early capitalist societies: people were encouraged to think of life in terms of costs and benefits, time and money. Indeed, John Stuart Mill observed in 1844 that the nascent field of political economy dealt with man “solely as a being who desires to possess wealth” and who inevitably acts to obtain “the greatest amount of necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries with the smallest quantity of labour and self-denial” . Here was the homo economicus in full view – the human person reimagined as an efficient wealth-generator.

It is important to note that not all historians believe Protestantism single-handedly “created” capitalism; elements of capitalist enterprise existed in Catholic lands before (and after) the Reformation . Nevertheless, the cultural shift Weber identified was real: in Protestant Europe, especially Calvinist communities in places like the Netherlands, England, and New England, a powerful cultural alignment occurred between piety and productivity. Idleness became one of the worst sins, and success in one’s work came to be seen as a sign of moral (even spiritual) standing . Over generations, this ethos helped mold the broader economic paradigm of modern capitalism. It normalized the relentless pursuit of profit and helped enshrine values of individualism, self-reliance, and material accumulation at the heart of societal life. Even those who later championed pure economic theory – thinkers like Adam Smith, J.S. Mill, or Ludwig von Mises – inherited a world in which the self-maximizing individual was the taken-for-granted starting point. Adam Smith’s famous observation that “it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest” exemplifies this mindset . What Smith articulated in 1776 as an economic principle – that individuals pursuing their self-interest inadvertently serve the common good – presupposed the moral legitimacy of self-interest and profit-seeking, a legitimacy that Protestant culture had helped bestow.

Critically, Protestant leaders themselves did not usually advocate naked greed or profit for its own sake. In fact, many Reformers tried to instill moral limits on economic behavior. John Calvin, for instance, argued for moderation in business: lending at interest and profit-making were permissible only insofar as they were useful to society and not exploitative or aimed at sheer personal enrichment . Calvin vehemently condemned unscrupulous usury or avarice; he taught that wealth must be coupled with charity and that the poor should never be charged interest . In his theology of work, Calvin emphasized that all occupations are vocations through which one can honor God – and yet, by opening the door to viewing commerce and labor as inherently godly, Calvin and other Reformers removed the older suspicions about worldly riches. They effectively “disenchanted” the medieval world that had surrounded economic life with many religious restraints (such as feast-day rest, monastic criticisms of wealth, and the prohibition on usury) . The result, as one historian notes, was that work and commerce were named and sanctified as part of the godly life, linking the life of the community with the divine will in a new way . This sanctification of work, however, contained the seeds of a more secular ethic. As Calvin’s own followers found in the Dutch Golden Age, tremendous material success created a theological tension – was wealth a blessing or a spiritual danger? Many prosperous Calvinists grew uneasy, fearing that their riches could be a sign of reprobation rather than election . Over time, the explicit religious rationale faded, but the behavior remained: work hard, earn, invest, repeat. The theologian Benjamin Friedman observes that eventually “the door was opened to a new, more secular view, that work might exist for its own sake.” In other words, what began as a way to serve God (through one’s calling and industriousness) evolved into working for the sake of work and wealth itself – a drastic shift in purpose.

Thus, the Protestant work ethic carried an ambivalent legacy. It did encourage personal responsibility, education, and economic development; but it also tended to sacralize concepts like efficiency, utility, and productivity divorced from their human and spiritual context. Where medieval Christendom had many social and religious brakes on unrestrained economic activity (guild rules, feast day rests, charity obligations, usury bans, etc.), the new Protestant-influenced order increasingly saw those brakes as obstacles to progress. Ultimately, the most devastating aspect of this legacy is how it contributed to a reductionist view of the human person – essentially equating human value with economic output. The rise of capitalism went hand in hand with seeing people not primarily as souls in community, but as units of labor (homo laborans) or units of consumption. As we shall see, this stood in stark contrast to the Orthodox Christian understanding of what a human person is.

Orthodox Vision of Labor: Work as 

Synergia

Long before the modern era, the Church – especially in its Eastern Orthodox expression – had developed a rich understanding of the meaning of work in human life. In Orthodox theology, every aspect of daily life (including work) is called to be sacramental – a means of communion with God and neighbor. The Greek term synergia (synergy or cooperation) is often used to describe the human role in God’s ongoing creative and redemptive work. Labor, in this view, is not merely a secular activity or a necessary evil, but a co-operation with God in caring for creation and building up the community . As Apostle Paul says, “we are God’s fellow workers” – an idea the Eastern Fathers took seriously in framing a theology of human work. Crucially, however, this work is always oriented toward communion and sanctification. Unlike the individualistic ethos that would later characterize capitalist societies, the Orthodox view sees each person’s work as embedded in a network of relationships – with family, with the local parish, with the poor, and ultimately with God.

Worship and work are meant to be in harmony, like two rhythms of a single heartbeat. Traditionally, Orthodox (and medieval Catholic) societies punctuated labor with frequent pauses for prayer, feast days, and communal gatherings. The liturgical calendar, with its regular feast days, fasts, and Sabbaths, provided a divinely ordained rhythm that moderated economic activity. For example, Sunday – the Day of the Lord – was universally kept as a day of rest and worship, when no work was to be done apart from works of mercy. In addition, great feasts (Pascha/Easter, Nativity, etc.) and numerous saints’ days were times when communities would cease work to pray and celebrate together. Labor was thus nested within a larger framework of spiritual meaning and communal joy. Work had dignity, but it also had limits; it was not allowed to consume the whole of life. As one historian notes, the very word “holiday” comes from “Holy Day” – days on which people had time off specifically to participate in religious festivities . In medieval Europe, there were dozens of such holy days in a year. By one estimate, peasants in late medieval times might enjoy around 60 to 80 non-working days annually thanks to the liturgical calendar (not counting Sundays) . This practice reflected a philosophy: human beings were made for more than constant toil. They needed worship, rest, and enjoyment of God’s creation. Even an early Church legend about St. John the Apostle makes this point: seeing John pause from his preaching to gently play with a tame bird, a certain young man scoffed that such “frivolous” relaxation was beneath a man of God. In response, John asked the youth to shoot an arrow from his bow. The young man did, then kept his bow drawn taut. John inquired why he didn’t keep the bow constantly bent; the youth answered that to do so would weaken the bow. John replied that in the same way, if a person works all the time without rest, they too will weaken. Just as a bow needs to be unstrung occasionally to retain its strength, so a person needs regular relaxation and holy leisure to be renewed . This humble anecdote, preserved by Church writers, echoes the biblical mandate of the Sabbath: “Six days you shall labor, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord” (Exodus 20:9-10).

In Orthodox thought, the value of work is real, but it is always penultimate. The ultimate purpose of human life is not production but participation in the life of God. The Eastern Fathers use the term theosis (deification) to describe the process of growing in likeness to God and full communion with Him. Work can aid this process when done in love and offered to God – for instance, working to provide for one’s family, to help the poor, or to beautify the world can be acts of love. Many Church Fathers extolled labor in this sense. St. Benedict in the West and the Orthodox monastic fathers in the East taught the nobility of manual work balanced with prayer (“ora et labora”). Monasteries became models of a balanced Christian economy: monks would till fields, bake bread, copy manuscripts, and offer hospitality – but always in a context where prayer and community were paramount. As one Orthodox writer explains, the monasteries were “the par excellence centers” where love of God and neighbor ordered economic life; within their walls, self-love (philautia) was continually challenged by ascetic labor, generosity, and shared wealth . This monastic example in turn influenced the broader society (“Romanity,” i.e. Byzantine Christian society), infusing social life with values of kenosis (self-emptying sacrifice), philotimo (honorable giving), and care for the weak . The Church taught that wealth is given by God for the sake of others. The great fourth-century bishops like St. Basil the Great and St. John Chrysostom thundered against hoarding and luxury while others lacked the basics. St. Basil admonished the greedy in no uncertain terms: “The bread which you hold back belongs to the hungry; the coat in your closet belongs to the naked; the gold you have hidden in the ground belongs to the poor.” Likewise, St. John Chrysostom taught that “not to share our own wealth with the poor is theft from the poor… we do not possess our own wealth, but theirs.” In the Orthodox moral vision, then, accumulating excessive wealth is not a virtue at all – it is a spiritual danger and a form of injustice. Work and commerce must be conducted with almsgiving, fairness, and communal well-being in mind, or else they become tools of sin.

Furthermore, Orthodoxy never embraced the notion that material success = divine favor. On the contrary, a successful merchant or governor was often urged by priests and monks to be extra cautious and humble, knowing that to whom much is given, much will be required. The Church canonized not the richest of this world, but those who used their resources for holiness – for example, St. Philaret the Merciful, a wealthy man who gave away all his goods to the poor, or kings and queens who were generous and just. The highest ideal in Eastern Christianity was holiness, not prosperity. Even the Byzantine emperors (the most materially powerful figures in Christendom) were reminded by the Church that their duty was to serve Christ’s kingdom above all; they were expected to feed the poor and endow hospitals and churches, not to simply enlarge their treasuries. The ecumenical councils and church canons reinforced these priorities. For instance, Church canons enjoined Christians to refrain from work on Sundays and holy days, to attend church and rest – a rule that placed spiritual life above economic activity. Canon law also condemned exploitation, fraud, and usury. The Council in Trullo (692), held in the Byzantine era, explicitly prohibited clergy from engaging in usury (interest-taking) and directed them to use church funds for the needy. Such measures show the continuation of an ethos: economic practices had to submit to Christian ethics and communal concern.

In summary, the Orthodox vision of work is integrally related to worship (leitourgia) and community (koinonia). Work is a means, not an end – its end is the glory of God and the support of loved ones and neighbors. When done in the right spirit, work is sanctified (made holy); but it must always be “eucharistic”, as one contemporary Orthodox writer put it – that is, done in thanksgiving and offered back to God. A farmer’s toil, a craftsman’s skill, a mother’s care for children – all these are arenas for spiritual development when understood properly. But if work loses this higher orientation, if it is separated from the life of prayer, the cycle of feasting and fasting, and the bonds of empathy and charity, then it degenerates. It becomes what the Greeks called ponos, mere painful toil, a consequence of the Fall (“By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread…”). Tragically, this degeneration is exactly what occurred in modern times when the religious framework around work was dismantled. The Reformation, by removing many of the traditional “scaffolds” around labor, did not cause this degeneration immediately (indeed early Protestants still had strong communal and religious lives), but it set the stage for work to become dangerously unmoored.

Fragmentation of Festal and Communal Life

One telling sign of the Reformation’s impact on socio-economic life was the drastic reduction of religious feast days in Protestant regions. In the Catholic and Orthodox calendar, numerous feast days meant local markets paused, courts closed, and labor ceased to allow for worship and celebration. This was not merely pious excess; it was a communal rhythm that placed limits on work and affirmed that life’s highest purpose was beyond making a living. The Reformers, however, often viewed these numerous feasts with suspicion – seeing them as either superstitious or conducive to idleness and revelry. In England, for example, the Protestant authorities under King Henry VIII and Edward VI eliminated the vast majority of Catholic holy days. The number of feast days was reduced by about 75% in England, as the Crown and Reformers sought to “purify” church life . Pilgrimages were banned and all the monasteries (which hosted many celebrations and provided charity on holy days) were dissolved . Similar patterns occurred across northern Europe: traditional festivals like Corpus Christi were dropped, saints’ feast commemorations were curtailed, and only the most biblically-based holidays (e.g. Christmas, Easter) were retained – and even those were sometimes shorn of popular festivity. The Puritans went furthest: in 17th-century New England, they banned the celebration of Christmas and other “man-made” holy days entirely . As one account notes, the Puritans declared “all days were alike, all days were holy” in the sense that no special feasting days were to interrupt the godly routine of work and worship . Holidays were denounced as excuses for drunkenness and vice, and the focus was put on constant industry (punctuated only by the weekly Sabbath and occasional days of fasting or thanksgiving) .

The immediate effects of these changes were increased time available for labor and production – essentially, more work days per year. Medieval employers had long chafed at the plethora of holidays, complaining that “peasants were not doing enough work” and often spent holy days in merrymaking instead of sober prayer . The Reformers, influenced by such complaints and by their own theology, saw many feasts as an expression of the sin of sloth (acedia) or as human inventions without scriptural warrant . Thus, by cutting back holy days, they aligned with the interests of emerging capitalist enterprise, whether intentionally or not. What was a “holy day” on the calendar now became simply a workday – and any reluctance to work continuously could be painted as laziness. In modern economic terms, each abandoned feast or market-fair could be seen as an “opportunity cost” recovered: time that could now be used for productive activity rather than “wasted” in celebration. The very concept of “opportunity cost” – the idea that time not spent making money is a loss of potential income – reflects the spirit of homo economicus. It stands in stark contrast to the older concept of sacred time, where time “wasted” in prayer or fellowship was not wasted at all, but rather time redeemed for the soul.

The erosion of the festal cycle went hand-in-hand with a fragmentation of traditional family and community life. The more that work and business were exalted as the center of life, the more other centers diminished. The family table, once the daily sacramental gathering of the household (often including extended family or neighbors in traditional societies), came under strain. In agrarian and village life, families typically worked together or at least took meals together at set times, maintaining a shared rhythm. But with the rise of modern economies, especially in Protestant countries that led the Industrial Revolution, we see families pulled apart by individualized schedules. In industrializing England and America, for instance, fathers, mothers, and even children would leave the home for factories at differing shifts; meal times became hasty or staggered affairs, often with some members absent. The common family dinner – which in an Orthodox or Catholic setting might have begun with prayers and ended with storytelling or catechism – was often reduced to a brief, utilitarian refueling. In Protestant cultural mythology, the ideal of the hardworking individual even encouraged a certain acceptance of family fragmentation for the sake of success. We think of the self-made man who “pulled himself up by his bootstraps” and perhaps had to spend long hours away from home to do so. A 20th-century commentator observed that in America, shaped by the Protestant ethic, men were praised for being ‘self-made’ and self-reliant, often at the cost of community ties . The ethos held that as long as one provided material support, domestic or communal socializing was secondary. Over generations, this contributed to the phenomenon of the nuclear family separated from the wider community, and even to the splintering of the nuclear family itself as economic pursuits (or stresses) took priority over togetherness.

Likewise, the parish – the local church community – ceased to be the focal point of social life in many Protestant-majority societies. In Orthodox villages, the parish church and square were the center of gravity: people gathered there not only for liturgical feasts but for schools, almsgiving, councils, and festivals. But as capitalism advanced, especially in more secularized Protestant contexts, the parish was increasingly marginalized. Instead of the church calendar dictating the flow of weeks and months, the demands of commerce did. The modern city dweller’s life came to orbit around the marketplace, the office, or the factory rather than the church. Sunday worship persisted, but even that grew precarious for some as the logic of commerce pushed toward a 7-day workweek. (Notably, by the late 19th and 20th centuries, some capitalist entrepreneurs tried to keep mills running every day, prompting labor reforms to preserve Sunday rest – a secular echo of religious concerns.) Sociologists have documented how, in early industrial cities, church attendance and involvement declined as working hours expanded and urban migration uprooted people from traditional parish networks. The net effect was that economic life no longer revolved around the church; the church was expected to fit in around economic life. Religion became more privatized – a matter of personal faith on Sunday – while the “real world” from Monday to Saturday was the world of business and toil.

To illustrate this stark change, we can invoke the penetrating critique offered by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels – ironic as it may be to enlist atheist revolutionaries in analyzing a religious phenomenon. In The Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx and Engels describe how capitalism shattered the old social order. They write: “The bourgeoisie… has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors’, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor… in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom – Free Trade.” . In another piercing line, they observe: “The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers. The bourgeoisie… has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.” . Though Marx and Engels were staunch critics of religion, their analysis here strikingly confirms the concerns of religious observers: under the reign of capital, relationships once imbued with sacred or communal value (priest and parishioner, master craftsman and apprentice, even parent and child) get redefined in terms of economic exchange. The parish priest becomes just another salaried functionary; the family becomes an economic unit; and the bonds of community and tradition give way to the cash nexus.

In these passages we see a vivid description of the dehumanizing trajectory that Orthodox Christians fear when work loses its connection to worship and community. The feast day becoming an “opportunity cost,” the family table breaking apart, the parish relegated to the periphery – all are aspects of what Marx called drowning all values in “egotistical calculation.” In an Orthodox assessment, this is nothing less than heresy in practice – a deviation from the truth of what human life is for. The late theologian Fr. Alexander Schmemann, for example, critiqued the modern world for its loss of “sacramentality” – the sense that ordinary life (eating, working, marrying) should be filled with God’s presence. When that sense is gone, he warned, even Christianity can be co-opted by secular aims, and people begin to live as if material progress were the highest good. We become, as another writer put it, “consumers in a vast shopping mall,” rather than pilgrims on a spiritual journey.

From Persons in Communion to Producers and Consumers

Perhaps the starkest contrast between the classical Christian vision and the modern capitalist vision lies in their respective understandings of what a human is. Christian theology – especially in the East – has a distinctive concept of the human being as a person (Greek: hypostasis). A person is not merely an individual instance of the species Homo sapiens. To be a person is to be a unique, unrepeatable someone defined by relationships of love and freedom. The model for this is found in the Holy Trinity: three divine Persons whose very being is an eternal communion of love. In the 4th century, the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa) revolutionized philosophy by asserting that personhood is constituted by relations, not by isolated self-subsistence. Metropolitan John Zizioulas, a prominent modern Orthodox theologian, emphasizes that in the Christian view personhood means being in communion, whereas the modern notion of the individual implies being fundamentally separate or self-contained . Zizioulas contrasts “the human who is related and integrated” (the person-in-communion) with “the human who is disengaged and isolated” (the individual of secular modernity) .

Under the influence of Protestant-rooted capitalism, society gradually abandoned the language of persons in communion and adopted the language of individuals defined by economic roles. People are routinely described as producers, consumers, investors, employees, shareholders, etc. These terms, while functionally descriptive, carry no sense of the intrinsic dignity or spiritual destiny of the human being. They locate a person’s value in what they produce or consume. In a consumerist culture, one’s identity can boil down to one’s job title, income bracket, or shopping habits – a far cry from the identity of a baptized person whose value is that they are a child of God, a member of the Body of Christ. This reduction is precisely what many Christian social critics lament. It is de-personalization: instead of persons with eternal worth, we see human units to be measured by productivity or purchasing power. The Orthodox philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev wrote extensively on this, warning that capitalism (no less than communism) can turn man into an object or a cog in a machine, thus negating his personhood.

The term homo economicus itself encapsulates this reduction. The classical Christian hypostasis is replaced by the “economic man” – a one-dimensional actor motivated by self-interest. This anthropological shift did not happen overnight, but the Reformation helped set it in motion by validating the autonomy of secular life and economic striving. Max Weber observed that with the Protestant ethic’s rise, a new kind of person emerged who “by hard work and a sober life” strove to demonstrate their worth . Over time, the religious motive fell away but the disciplined, calculating behavior remained. Modern neoliberal capitalism, as scholars like Michael Novak or Samuel Huntington have noted, often presupposes a quasi-Protestant image of the citizen: independent, self-reliant, focused on material betterment. Even in officially secular economics, there lingers what Weber called the “elective affinity” between certain Protestant-rooted values and capitalist culture . For example, Lawrence Harrison and David Landes argued that predominantly Protestant nations developed cultural tendencies (trust, thrift, punctuality) that favor capitalist development – although these arguments are debated. What is clear is that the ethical foundation laid by the Reformers made it easier for society to later accept that “as long as you can produce, you have value.” The flip side is grim: those who do not produce – the very young, the elderly, the disabled, or simply the economically unsuccessful – risk being seen as lesser contributors, even burdens. In a traditional Christian society, even the penniless or infirm person had a honored place as an object of mercy and a bearer of God’s image (indeed, the Bible and Fathers often emphasize caring for precisely those who cannot reciprocate, as the true test of charity). But in a society governed by the ideology of homo economicus, the non-productive person is marginalized. We see this today in attitudes that treat the poor as “useless eaters” or measure a person’s worth by their job status. It is a far cry from the days when whole communities would care for a destitute widow because Christ commanded it, or when large families were valued as blessings rather than seen as economic liabilities.

This shift to seeing humans as producers/consumers has had profound consequences. It paved the way for the commodification of labor – people selling their time and bodily effort as a commodity in the marketplace. While labor has always been part of life, the industrial capitalist era turned labor power itself into a thing to be bought and sold, often alienating workers from the fruits of their work. Social analysts like Marx picked up on this alienation, but long before Marx the Church sensed the danger: Pope Leo XIII, in his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, criticized both capitalist exploitation and socialist materialism, upholding the dignity of the worker as a person and the importance of religion in tempering economic life. Though Leo was Catholic, his concerns resonated with Orthodox teachings as well. In Orthodox countries, one did not see the same early capitalist drive – something noted by modern studies that find Orthodox populations less inclined to entrepreneurship and competition . Some have argued (like Leonid Bershidsky in a controversial 2018 article) that Orthodox Christian culture is inherently “anti-capitalist” or less comfortable with capitalism, citing lower embrace of free-market values in Eastern Europe . While such claims can be overstated (and have been critiqued as oversimplifications) , there is a kernel of truth: Orthodoxy never underwent the sort of theological reorientation that Protestantism did regarding worldly work and wealth. Well into the 20th century, Russian and Balkan Orthodox peasants kept a slower, communal way of life (partly because industrialization came later and was often imposed by Communist regimes rather than developed organically). The shock-therapy introduction of neoliberal capitalism in the 1990s to these societies was met with considerable popular resistance, perhaps reflecting a cultural discomfort with the ruthless logic of the market . Observers noted that ordinary people did not spontaneously start quoting the Bible or Church Fathers against capitalism – they spoke of their lived experience of hardship – but intellectuals and church leaders did articulate a critique rooted in Orthodox social thought . For instance, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill has often decried consumerism and the reduction of humans to economic units, calling instead for an economy of solidarity and virtue.

In sum, Protestantism’s “economic heresy” – as some Orthodox critics bluntly label it – was the elevation of individual success and utility above the communal and sacramental life of the Church. It shifted focus from persons-in-communion (the church as the Body of Christ) to individuals-in-competition (society as the sum of competing self-interests). It is a tragic irony that a movement originally meant to renew Christian faith ended up contributing (indirectly) to secularizing society’s values. The Reformers sought to put God first – Soli Deo Gloria – but by rejecting many mediating structures (the wider Catholic church community, the monastic witness, the feast day cycle), they inadvertently handed the “secular” realm over to its own devices. The English Puritans who banned Christmas may have thought they were honoring God by preventing revelry; yet in doing so, they made December 25, 1644 (for example) an ordinary market day in London . The “sanctification” of all days meant, paradoxically, the desanctification of the special times. Eventually, the market devoured the calendar.

Modern Economic Thought and the Triumph of Utility

By the 18th and 19th centuries, the transformation of values was largely complete in the leading Western nations. Utility – the idea central to Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian philosophy – became a sort of new moral compass. Bentham famously defined the good as the greatest happiness (or utility) for the greatest number. Though Bentham was no Christian, his context was an England already imbued with the calculative rationality that Protestant ethic helped foster. John Stuart Mill, a child of a utilitarian and empiricist milieu, inherited this and refined the concept of homo economicus as noted earlier. In Mill’s view, political economy abstracts the human as a wealth-seeking, utility-calculating creature . This is a deliberate abstraction – Mill knew real humans have other motives, but he argued it was useful for economic analysis. However, when an abstraction is used long enough, it can start to seem like reality. Thus the image of man as a utility maximizer fed into policy-making, business practices, and eventually popular culture.

The great classical economist Adam Smith, despite being a moral philosopher who understood sympathy and virtue (as evidenced in his Theory of Moral Sentiments), is most remembered for Wealth of Nations, which extols self-interest in exchange . A single famous line about the butcher and brewer’s self-love has probably done more to encourage moral acceptance of greed than a hundred sermons have done to resist it . Smith did not advocate personal greed per se – he believed in providence and social feelings – but he set the template for an economic system where the pursuit of self-interest drives the common good via an “invisible hand.” Later economists like Ludwig von Mises or Friedrich Hayek in the 20th century took this to a more absolutist level: they argued that free-market capitalism, predicated on each individual seeking their own ends, was not only the most efficient system but the most aligned with human freedom. Mises viewed rational self-interest as so fundamental that he dismissed ethical critiques as anti-capitalistic prejudices. He acknowledged that capitalism thrived first in Protestant countries, but attributed it to superior rational institutions rather than spiritual factors . Mises, being secular, didn’t credit Weber’s spiritual thesis much; yet he effectively sanctified “rationalistic liberalism” – his term for the Enlightenment economic order – calling it humanity’s “one salvation” (a telling quasi-religious phrase) .

On the other side of the spectrum, critics of capitalism – from Karl Marx to Catholic social teachers to modern Orthodox thinkers – all echo a common concern: that an economic system built solely on self-interest and profit dehumanizes people and undermines community. We have already cited Marx’s eloquent (if scathing) words about capitalism’s effect on family and faith . Another critic, albeit from a different angle, was Martin Luther King Jr. Speaking in 1967, Dr. King challenged the myth that capitalism’s rise was due to Protestant thrift and sacrifice. “The fact is,” King said, “that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor” . He was pointing out that the moral gloss of the Protestant ethic often served to hide very immoral practices – colonialism, slavery, and industrial sweatshops – which also helped build capitalism. In King’s Christian vision (he was a Protestant minister, notably), the values of justice and community should trump unchecked profit. Similarly, modern Popes (like John Paul II in Centesimus Annus and Francis in Laudato Si’) have critiqued consumerism and the treatment of humans as mere consumers, calling for what Francis terms an “integral human ecology” that remembers man’s spiritual and social nature. Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew has voiced parallel critiques, especially regarding environmental destruction driven by consumerism – again a fruit of viewing the world only in terms of utility.

What all these critiques demand is a reassessment of the human person’s true end. Is our telos (purpose) endless acquisition, or eternal communion? Is it theosis or mere utility? The Eastern Christian answer is clear. The Westminster Catechism of the Puritans famously stated man’s chief end is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Ironically, in practice the Puritan-influenced culture often came to act as if man’s chief end was to glorify God by industrious achievement and enjoy Him in heaven later, with little time for enjoyment now. The Orthodox would respond that foretaste of true joy must permeate even our work here and now, especially through communal feast and worship. A purely work-driven life that postpones joy to the hereafter is as bad a witness as a hedonistic life that ignores God – in both cases, something essential is missing.

Conclusion: Toward a Sacramental Economy

In conclusion, the Reformation’s role in “birthing” homo economicus was a matter of unintended consequences. The Protestant Reformers sought to renew Christian faith, emphasizing personal responsibility, calling, and devotion. But in severing many of the bonds of the old communal and sacramental worldview, they cleared a path for a new anthropology to take hold – one that measured human worth by productivity and success. This legacy of Protestantism can indeed be seen as devastating, in the sense that it contributed to the modern idolatries of wealth and work. It prepared the soil for a brand of capitalism that often treats people as means to an end (profit) rather than as ends in themselves. Modern society largely operates on the assumption that maximizing economic growth and individual utility is the supreme goal – an assumption foreign to most of human history and certainly to early Christianity.

Yet, recognition of this legacy also opens the door to correction. The resources to challenge homo economicus lie deep in the Christian tradition – not only in Orthodoxy, but also in the social teachings of Catholicism and the counter-witness of many Western Christians (Franciscans, Distributists, etc.) who never made peace with the idea that “greed is good.” There is a growing awareness, even among secular economists, that the model of purely self-interested rational actors is incomplete and harmful . Concepts like “homo reciprocans” (man the cooperator) are being proposed as alternatives, emphasizing that humans also thrive on reciprocity and altruism . In other words, the pendulum is swinging back toward recognizing the importance of communion and mutuality in economic life – principles that Orthodox Christianity never abandoned.

The challenge and opportunity for Christians today (of all traditions) is to re-infuse economic life with the ethos of communion, sanctification, and festal joy. This means recalling that the Sabbath exists for man, not man for the Sabbath – and by extension, the economy exists for man, not man for the economy. Reclaiming practices like shared meals, community celebrations, and church-centered calendars is not nostalgia; it is resistance against an inhuman economic logic. It means, for example, insisting that workers have time for family and worship (instead of applauding 70-hour workweeks), or that businesses respect holy days and human-paced schedules. It means valuing people in all stages of life – caring for children, the elderly, and the disabled not as burdens but as brothers and sisters – thereby rejecting the notion that one’s worth is equal to one’s output. It also means encouraging what some call an “economy of gift” alongside the economy of exchange: fostering generosity, hospitality, and care for the poor in imitation of the early Church in Jerusalem (Acts 2:44-47).

Historically, there have been attempts within Protestantism as well to correct the extreme individualism of its work ethic – the rise of the Social Gospel in the 19th century, Christian socialism, or modern evangelical calls for simplicity and community. Western Christians have their own history of critiquing capitalism . The task now is perhaps one of deep ecumenism: drawing on the best of each tradition to articulate a vision of human flourishing that transcends homo economicus. The Orthodox can contribute their mystical and communal perspective; Catholics, their developed social doctrine; Protestants, their emphasis on personal integrity and calling – all synthesized under the lordship of Christ, who said “You cannot serve both God and Mammon.”

To be sure, the material gains of the modern capitalist era are real – longer lifespans, technological advances, etc. – and few would advocate a simple return to pre-industrial agrarianism. The point, rather, is to heal the spiritual damage that came with those gains. This means dethroning the idols of utility, efficiency, and profit-for-profit’s-sake, and reorienting them to serve genuine human and divine ends. Work can be re-hallowed by linking it once more to worship and rest – for instance, some businesses now deliberately close on Sundays or encourage employee volunteerism, small gestures that acknowledge human needs beyond profit. Economic success can be seen not as an end but as a means to enable generosity – echoing John Wesley’s maxim, “Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can,” where the final clause redeems the first two.

Above all, a sacramental view of life reminds us that every person is a living icon of God, destined for eternal communion. No mere balance sheet can capture a person’s true value. In the Orthodox Divine Liturgy, during the Great Entrance, the priest carries the bread and wine (the work of human hands) to the altar, symbolically offering all of creation and human labor back to God for transformation. This act can serve as a paradigm for a renewed economic mindset: we take our work, our productivity, our economy, and offer it to God, to be transfigured for His glory and the love of mankind. When work and wealth are directed toward communion – when the family table, the parish fellowship, and the shared feast are once again at the center of life – then homo economicus will fade, and the true human person in the image of God will shine forth.

Sources:

• Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. 1905. (Analysis of how Calvinist values encouraged the development of capitalism) .
  
• Protestant Work Ethic – Wikipedia (summary of Weber’s theory and its reception).
  
• Reformation – Wikipedia (on reduction of feast days in Protestant England) .
  
• The Historic Present: “The Protestant work ethic debunked!” (2008) – discusses Puritan elimination of holidays and attitudes toward work and idleness.
  
• Leiden Medievalists Blog: “Medieval views on Holy Days and Relaxation” (2018) – on the abundance of medieval holy days and the rationale for rest.
  
• Novo Scriptorium: “Capitalism, Protestant Ethics & Orthodox Tradition” (2018) – contrasts Orthodox views on labor, predestination, and profit with Protestant views.
  
• Katharyne Mitchell, “Religious charity and the spirit of homo economicus” – The Immanent Frame (2019) – linking Weber’s thesis to modern philanthropy and noting decline of medieval charity notions with rise of individualism.
  
• John Stuart Mill, quoted in Homo Economicus – Wikipedia – defining economic man as one who seeks wealth with minimal work.
  
• Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776), quoted in Homo Economicus – Wikipedia – self-interest of butcher/baker as driver of economic exchange.
  
• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848) – critique of capitalism’s destruction of communal bonds and reduction of all values to money.
  
• Yale Reflections: “Calvinism and Capitalism: Together Again?” (2010) by Carlos Eire – discusses Calvin’s views on economics and how a door opened for secular work ethic.
  
• St. Basil the Great, Sermon on the Rich ; St. John Chrysostom, Homily on Lazarus – Church Fathers on the moral duty to share wealth with the poor.
  
• Zizioulas, John. Being as Communion (1985) – Orthodox theology of personhood vs. individuality .
  
• Martin Luther King Jr.,  “Where Do We Go from Here?” (1967) – on the myth of the Protestant ethic and the reality of exploitation in capitalism.
  
• Public Orthodoxy blog (Fordham University), Nathaniel Wood, “Orthodoxy, Capitalism, and the West” (2018) – rebutting oversimplified links between Orthodoxy and anti-capitalism, noting Western Christian critiques of capitalism too.
  
• Matthew 6:24 – “You cannot serve God and Mammon.” (Biblical touchstone for critiquing the idolatry of wealth).