Concluding Remarks

Abstract

This chapter provides some brief concluding remarks.

This study contributes to existing research in the sociology of religion and development studies fields by demonstrating the effect of the mutually reinforcing configuration of multiple prosperity triggers (religion–political–environment). Historical Protestantism largely influenced prosperity by promoting education, by secularising institutions, and by stabilising democracy. Protestantism has also proven highly influential in the successive historical law revolutions that gradually mitigated the power of pervasive feudal institutions and of papalist medieval canon law. In contrast, traditionally Roman Catholic countries have generally upheld a medieval model of extractivist institutions until anti-clerical (non-communist) movements were able to weaken this influence in some countries.

The cross-method results of this study show that prosperity and transparency respond mainly to three reinforcing (rather than competing) explanatory mechanisms. They are, in order of importance: (1) Environment, geography, topography, latitude; (2) Religion (considering its institutional influence, legal origin, proportion of adherents, syncretism) and; (3) Other non-religious political factors such as communism.

More specifically, a combination of factors causing corruption and low competitiveness in countries in Europe and the Americas includes: (1) low Environmental Performance (EPI); (2) Roman Catholicism as a State Religion; (3) high adherence to Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism; (4) Concordat with the Vatican; and (5) French (clerical) or socialist legal origin.

Consequently, the influence of the Protestant Reformation in Northern Europe, and later, its extended effect in North America, have produced a loop of trust, transparency, and prosperity. In contrast, the hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church-State has not yet been broken in most Latin American countries. The results are high corruption and low prosperity.

Methodologically, Woodberry’s conclusion to his in-depth study of the explanatory influence of Protestantism on democracy also applies here:

Although any piece of this evidence can be critiqued, the cumulative evidence makes finding a consistent alternative explanation extremely difficult. If alternative explanations are not consistent between contexts and methods, it is not clear why we should prefer them over an explanation that works consistently across such a wide variety of contexts and methods (Woodberry, 2012, p. 268).

I wish to end this book with some thought-provoking lines from the Old Testament:

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance (King James Bible, 1769, Psalms 33:12; original emphases).

The previous verse shall in no way be understood as otherness or exclusion, since the Scriptures also state:

Thus saith the Lord, […] For I know their works and their thoughts: it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see my glory (King James Bible, 1769, Isaiah 66: 1, 18).

For thus saith the Lord of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; and I will shake all nations, and the Desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts (King James Bible, 1769, Haggai 2: 6–7).

And it shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and an honor before all the nations of the earth, which shall hear all the good that I do unto them: and they shall fear and tremble for all the goodness and for all the prosperity that I procure unto it (King James Bible, 1769, Jeremiah 33: 9).