ABSTRACT

Benjamin Franklin was the most distinguished representative of America ideology in the eighteenth century. His story embodied the spirit of the emerging nation with its belief in upward mobility, Yankee ingenuity, and manifest destiny. Sociologists have taken notice of the relationship between Franklin and Puritanism ever since the days of Max Weber in the early part of the twentieth century. The moral rigor of Puritanism is seen as providing a religious foundation, from which an incipient form of capitalism in Franklin and others evolved. At the very least, the Puritans and the Reformation promoted a more active participation of its people in the world than the theology of the previous era. The Middle Ages found a higher ideal in the contemplative life of the monastery and longed for a beatific vision in the eschaton as the ultimate state. The status of the laity arose with the advent of Protestantism.