Abstract
Excerpt: "This article aims to ask what the history of the Protestant ethic might contribute to our understanding of the contemporary relationship between Georgian Orthodoxy, economics, and capitalism. In doing so, we engage with a handful of retrospections that offer engagements with Weber regarding this interface. We begin with the key arguments advanced in The Protestant Ethic. Then we incorporate contemporary Pentecostalism into Weber's genealogical account of the rise of capitalist modernity. Thus, we hope to find parallels between twenty-first-century Pentecostalism and the seventeenth-century ascetic Protestantism as a sort of modernization paradigm.
The second part of the article is an exploration of Georgian Orthodox Christian views on religious motivation concerning economic and social transitions. There is a popular point of view in Georgia that joining the EU will automatically and miraculously increase the level of income for everybody. Therefore, the motivation at the level of good intentions is great. Unfortunately, this popular sentiment to a great extent is based on the social perception, once spread in the Soviet Union, that “the government is providing citizens with work, good or not so good salary, housing, etc.” At the grassroots level, the childish stereotype of a great family, where the leading Communist elite (government, Communist Party leaders) were identified as pater familias, taking care of their children–i.e., citizens, is one of the elements of the crippled social psychology of communist reality. It has not disappeared completely yet. Modernization needs responsible participation, and how much this quality is developed in Georgia is one of the targets of this research. http://"
Recommended Citation
Taivans, Leons Gabriels
(2022)
"Between Oriental Orthodoxy and European Modernity: Georgian Orthodox Church, Market Economy, and Social Message,"
Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe: Vol. 42
:
Iss.
6
, Article 6.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55221/2693-2148.2371
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ree/vol42/iss6/6
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