The Calvinist work ethic is less Jesus and more Old Testament: you were born into sin, you live under the Curse of God, and you'd better work as hard as you can every day and shun vice or you'll go to hell.
That's no different than orthodox Christian theology. Like with a handful of other unique religions, orthodox Christianity fundamentally put great value into and encouraged work in the temporal world. In Roman Catholic theology science--knowing the physical world through exploration and labor--is at least in principle an avenue of holy revelation similar to that of the bible and the Church.
I think the difference is in the shedding of the ancient modes of worship. Follow Protestant theologies to their logical end and the only way to manifest piety is through industrious labor. It's not just that work is prayer; that concept was already present in orthodox Christianity. Work becomes the religion, rather than being one aspect of a more complex system of worship.
Well, as far as I was taught growing up Roman Catholic, you were supposed to be faithful and good, and honour God every day, and over time your soul would be saved through faith and good deeds. In old-school Calvinism, original sin is upon you until He takes it away, like the bomb in Jackie Chan's mouth in Rush Hour 2, and he'll just as quickly give it back if you break the faith.
I'm not sure that's official Catholic doctrine[1] but in any event compared to many other religions, and many strains of Christianity (think early Gnostic sects) it's all splitting hairs. People quibble endlessly over how and why good works and labor are important--do they reflect salvation or further salvation?--but I don't think those theological distinctions have substantively effected our political culture. Such minor distinctions are exaggerated by denominations precisely because of their larger shared characteristics that require them to work hard at differentiating themselves. Most of these nuances lose their importance when, e.g., comparing Christianity to Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism.
[1] AFAIU official Roman Catholic doctrine, as well as most Protestant faiths, is that salvation only comes from the grace of God; and that the only sure-fire way of receiving that grace is wholehearted belief in Jesus Christ as the son of God who died for the remission of sin. But that just begs the question of what "belief" means, thus the centuries of dispute subsequent to the domination of Trinitarianism.
could you clarify what you mean by orthodox in this case? This is like, the one place where it really does make a difference. (Roman Catholicism, which is what luther forked, may be little-o orthodox but it is explicitly not big-O Orthodox)
Yeah, I use little "o" for the dominate strain of Christianity that can be traced back to the 4th or 5th centuries and which Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and (to a diminished degree) most Protestant sects can readily and directly trace their doctrines and beliefs. Trinitarianism isn't as good of a fit in this context even though there's substantial overlap. But Trinitarianism would outright exclude, e.g., Mormonism even though I think it's fair to say that much of the social ethos in Mormonism derives from orthodox Christianity, and particularly from aspects of Protestant theology, even if Mormonism doesn't share the once singularly defining characteristic of orthodox Christianity. That shared characteristic--that engaging in the world and doing good works matters, however it's framed doctrinally--is what I wanted to emphasize.
At the very least I think it helps exclude all the niche sects, old and new, that pedantic people could bring up as exceptions to generalizations about the origin and evolution of Western value systems.
