ABSTRACT
Max Weber was influenced by a large group of noteworthy theologians and historians, among them the theologian Otto Baumgarten and his father Hermann, a well-known historian, and American theologian William Emery Channing. In Weber's opinion, the Marxist analysis of capitalism was too deterministic. In his essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber examined in particular the ethics of Calvinism, Pietism, Methodism, and the Baptist sects, emphasizing the role of election obtained through grace, the rules of life, and especially the notion of predestination. Weber remarked that Pietists' religious education, which had Lutheran origins, was very individualistic but was based on an active faith, which somehow favored, more than other religions did, an economic attitude. The main point analyzed by Weber was "the influence of certain religious ideas on the development of an economic spirit, or the ethos of an economic system.
