Christians of the North (Northern Germany, England, The Lowlands, Scandinavia) moved far away from Jesusâ original teachings, towards a more âcapitalistâ view of Christianity. It wasnât exactly intentional, but it happened. It started with Martin Luther, who decided that corrupt Catholicism was bad, which it was. Luther said that maybe money wasnât important and you should just, like, not have powerful clergy, to avoid corruption. The Catholics werenât too happy about that, but it inspired another dude in Switzerland to join Luther. His name was John Calvin, and he thought that, including some other things, everything in the universe was predestined, and there was a group of humans, called âelectâ that were gonna go to heaven. If you were not in the elect, you wouldnât go to heaven; only the elect would go. Luther was like ânahâ to Calvin, so they went their separate ways. Even though most of Europe went Lutheran, Scotland, Netherlands, and Switzerland went Calvinist.
These Calvinists had an issue: how do you know if youâre elect? After a few guesses, they (especially the Scots) decided that if you were successful in this life, youâd be successful in the next. Money was the indicator of success, so if you make a lot of money, youâd be elect. This leads to the âProtestant Ethicâ, the idea that Protestants are just harder workers because of the Calvinist beliefs. But if most Protestant countries arenât Calvinist, how does it spread? The Lutherans and Anglicans saw that the Calvinists were really successful, so they just imitated the Calvinists. Especially the English, who stole everything Dutch and joined the Scots in 1707. Luckily for the newly-formed Brits, James Watt was Scottish, as were most industrialists. And so was Adam Smith, the guy who formulated capitalism.