Protestantism and Protectionism

According to Jacob Viner ‘s Religious Thought and Economic Society , Protestants were more apt to advocate mercantilism than Catholics, and the differences were rooted in their different attitudes toward the nation-state: “Mercantilism penetrated much less into Catholic than into Protestan theology. Catholic doctrine as such as universalist by tradition, and papal ambitions, ecclesiastical and political, encountered a formidable obstacle in strongly nationalistic policies . . . . Mercantilism, which was nationalist in essence and stressed national objects as against the moral claims of individuals or other peoples, found an easier entry into the doctrinal teaching of clergymen belonging to the various state-established, state-supported, and largely state-dominated churches of Protestantism than into the corpus of doctrine of the tradition-bound and supra-national Catholic Church. Although in its struggle against Gallicanism and Protestantism, the Papacy did not hesitate to make use of national rivalries for power and wealth, it escaped deep entanglement with mercantilism and doctrine, as some of the established churches of Protestantism did not.”

Two further observations: One, that these differences in assessment of the nation-state are really more fundamentally differences in ecclesiology. It would be interesting to track the relations, if any, between ecumenism within Protestantism and policies regarding international trade, especially in the US. Two, where’d Pat Buchanan come from?