{"id":18775,"date":"2017-04-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-07T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=498"},"modified":"2017-04-07T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T00:00:00","slug":"weber-the-idealist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/04\/weber-the-idealist\/","title":{"rendered":"Weber the Idealist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

R<\/span>obert Scribner doesn\u2019t think Protestantism \u201cdisenchanted\u201d the world. Reformers did attack certain forms of medieval \u201cmagic.\u201d They rejected \u201csacramentals,\u201d which were \u201cfunctional\u201d rituals that could be used as protection against devils.<\/p>\n

This didn\u2019t produce a \u201cbuffered\u201d world, impervious to outside influence. No one surpassed Luther in his obsession with demonic activity, rituals weren\u2019t done away with (though Protestants had a different understanding of ritual from Catholics), and the world was still seen as the arena of God\u2019s presence and activity. Protestants even developed their own Protestant superstitions\u2014using Bibles, hymnals, and prayer books for healing and protection. If there was a change, it was that Protestants didn\u2019t think they could control the \u201cseepage\u201d of sacred into the secular; the intrusions from outside were as unpredictable and uncontrollable as you\u2019d expect a sovereign God to be.<\/p>\n

Scribner sees typically nineteenth-century obsessions in Weber\u2019s thesis, and argues that the theory, useful as it may be, didn\u2019t arise from historical study and can\u2019t withstand historical scrutiny: \u201cThe notion of the \u2018Protestant ethic\u2019 was an insight Weber arrived at less from historical research and more from observations of nineteenth-century Protestant behavior, which he then projected backwards in time in a classic example of the \u2018regressive method.\u2019 The further assumption that an adequate understanding of \u2018Protestantism\u2019 was achieved by focusing primarily on the theology of the main reformers, was a crucial next step, so that he did not have to confront the problem of the actual historicity of Protestantism, or the untidiness of the phenomenon as it was put into practice. It was sufficient to find examples to illustrate his ideal typical construction, drawn (as has often been remarked) rather indiscriminately from several way stations along the road from Luther to Weber\u2019s own\u201d (493). <\/p>\n

An oddly idealist method for a sociologist, that.<\/p>\n

(Scribner, \u201cThe Reformation, Popular Magic, and the \u201cDisenchantment of the World,\u201d The Journal of Interdisciplinary History<\/em>, 23:3 [Winter, 1993]: 475\u2013494.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Scribner doesn\u2019t think Protestantism \u201cdisenchanted\u201d the world. Reformers did attack certain forms of medieval \u201cmagic.\u201d They rejected \u201csacramentals,\u201d which were \u201cfunctional\u201d rituals that could be used as protection against devils. This didn\u2019t produce a \u201cbuffered\u201d world, impervious to outside influence. No one surpassed Luther in his obsession with demonic activity, rituals weren\u2019t done away […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1491,1556,1142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disenchantment","category-max-weber","category-reformation"],"yoast_head":"\nWeber the Idealist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Robert Scribner doesn't think Protestantism \u201cdisenchanted\u201d the world. 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