The Birth of Religion From the Spirit of Capitalism: Religion and Economy in the Global World of the Twenty-First Century

Was modern capitalism born out of the spirit of Protestantism, as Max Weber assumed, or is it rather the other way around, that the spirit of the economy shapes and forms modern religions? This article examines these diverse interpretations of religion and economics in contemporary discourses from a historical and systematic perspective and develops the thesis that religion is a separate mode of existence in modern culture, which differs from other cultural modes of existence such as economics, politics, etc. This thesis is developed in three lines of argument. It begins with the classical interpretations of the relationship between religion and economy, as discussed in the debates of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries following Max Weber. In these discourses, religion appears either as capitalism itself or as something that overcomes it. The second section examines the understanding of religion and culture on which these conceptions are based. Against this background, the third line of argument understands religion as an autonomous form of culture alongside others. In a differentiated, pluralistic culture, religion does not claim to solve economic problems, but offers its own way of interpreting human life in the world considering itself both as autonomous and able to recognize the plural world.