And what that means is that the single-minded devotion to work that Weber described no longer offers any reassurance that can help Protestants cope with the anxiety of uncertainty about their salvation. What Paul Krugman calls the Great Divergence — escalating economic inequality coupled with the divergence of productivity and wages — means that a Protestant ethic will only compound that salvation anxiety. Working harder and having nothing to show for it can appear to be evidence that you are not favored by God, thus heightening the fear that you are not among the elect.
So how, then, are Protestants to cope with salvation anxiety? For some, I think, the solution has been tribalism.
Tribalism allows you to know that you belong. It allows you to claim, with confidence, that you are among the righteous. It promises the assurance of salvation that Reformed Protestantism otherwise withholds.
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