Individualism and protestantism (OT - see disclaimer)

[Tabouli]

No: HPFGUIDX 34265

Er Mods, I thought I'd post this on the main list (as I don't think the two posters I'm answering are on the OT list), but with invitations to them to join OT and continue discussing it there, if they wish, rather than try to sprinkle HP canon references on it to make it superficially legit.  (Tabouli braces herself for Howlers)

judyserenity:
> I don't know to what extent belief in personal choice, etc. is 
Protestant. (Didn't a lot of Protestants believe in predestination, as 
opposed to free will? I drive by "Free Will Baptist" Churches 
sometimes, which implies that somewhere there are non-Free Will 
Baptists.) However, I agree that there are strong Christian elements 
in the "moral" of the JKR stories. I have a post on that here 
somewhere. 

Eileen (choking on her breakfast):
> Fundamentally *Protestant*? Every once and a while, I get sick of everything being attributed to the Protestant Reformation at the expense of the Middle Ages, my projected field of study. If anything, the Protestant reformation eroded the strong understanding of individual choice, effort, and responsibility introduced in the Middle Ages.....<

Ah well, no-one ever said cross-cultural theories were an exact science.  Like sociobiological theories, they're all pretty speculative and subject to a lot of fuzziness about cause and effect.  You can't really prove where cultural values came from because you can't measure them directly, so many demographic and historical factors impact on them and available sources of information, and they're constantly shifting anyway.  I am profoundly ignorant of history (obviously!), but IIRC from my sources for this comment, the individualism-Protestantism connection was made on the grounds that individualism is a core value in countries whose legal and educational institutions were founded during a time when community leaders were adherents to morality and principles derived from the Protestant church.  Whether Protestantism originally purloined individualist ideals from the Middle Ages and corrupted them or not, isn't it fair enough to assume there's *some* connection? (presumably quibbles about some brands of Protestantism rejecting key parts of individualism could be sorted out by looking at which denominations significant community leaders belonged to, etc.etc.).

I'm not totally convinced by the simplistic Protestantism/Individualism theory myself (certainly not enough to refer to it in proper academic writing, as opposed to training), but as I'm more interested in using this sort of theory as an explanatory tool, it doesn't matter that much.  I don't proclaim it as established fact.  I'm using it a cross-cultural trainer, not a history teacher, and the ultimate origin of individualism isn't really that important, for my purposes; what's more important is that people realise it isn't held to be the highest form of virtue and morality outside the Western world.  Connecting it to a major Western religion in a plausible way (religion and value prevalent within similar geographical constraints, religion promotes individual, unmediated relationship with God, etc.) helps make it more concrete for people than a slide full of jargon and waffle about "individualism".  There are other theories of the origin of cultural values, which go back well before the Middle Ages, and are based in environmental and geographical parameters, but they're even more tenuous.

Tabouli.


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