Editing Reformed Christianity (section)

==Social and economic influences==
{{See also|Protestant work ethic}}
Calvin expressed himself on [[usury]] in a 1545 letter to a friend, Claude de Sachin, in which he criticized the use of certain passages of scripture invoked by people opposed to the charging of interest. He reinterpreted some of these passages, and suggested that others of them had been rendered irrelevant by changed conditions. He also dismissed the argument (based upon the writings of [[Aristotle]]) that it is wrong to charge interest for money because money itself is barren. He said that the walls and the roof of a house are barren, too, but it is permissible to charge someone for allowing him to use them. In the same way, money can be made fruitful.<ref>The letter is quoted in {{cite book |title=Main Currents of Western Thought: Readings in Western Europe Intellectual History from the Middle Ages to the Present |publisher=Yale University Press |year=1978 |isbn=0-300-02233-6 |editor-last=Le Van Baumer |editor-first=Franklin |location=New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. |language=en-us}}</ref>

He qualified his view, however, by saying that money should be lent to people in dire need without hope of interest, while a modest interest rate of 5% should be permitted in relation to other borrowers.<ref>See {{cite book |last=Haas |first=Guenther H. |title=The Concept of Equity in Calvin's Ethics |publisher=Wilfrid Laurier University Press |year=1997 |isbn=0-88920-285-0 |location=Waterloo, Ontario, Canada |pages=117ff |language=en}}</ref>

In ''[[The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism]]'', [[Max Weber]] wrote that capitalism in [[Northern Europe]] evolved when the [[Protestant]] (particularly Calvinist) ethic influenced large numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world, developing their own [[Organization|enterprise]]s and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment. In other words, the [[Protestant work ethic]] was an important force behind the unplanned and uncoordinated emergence of modern [[capitalism]].<ref name="aura.abdn.ac.uk">{{cite journal |last1=McKinnon |first1=A. M. |year=2010 |title=Elective affinities of the Protestant ethic: Weber and the chemistry of capitalism |url=http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstream/2164/3035/1/McKinnon_Elective_Affinities_final_non_format.pdf |journal=Sociological Theory |volume=28 |issue=1 |pages=108–126 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-9558.2009.01367.x |s2cid=144579790 |hdl-access=free |hdl=2164/3035}}</ref>

Expert researchers and authors have referred to the United States as a "Protestant nation" or "founded on Protestant principles,"<ref>Schultz, Kevin M. ''Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise,'' p. 9.</ref><ref>Rosenblum, Nancy L. ''Obligations of Citizenship and Demands of Faith: Religious Accommodation in Pluralist Democracies'', Princeton University Press, 2000 – 438, p. 156.</ref> specifically emphasizing its Calvinist heritage.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_UJXV7HYlaQC&pg=PR13 |title=The Calvinist Roots of the Modern Era |first1=Aliki |last1=Barnstone |first2=Michael Tomasek |last2=Manson |first3=Carol J. |last3=Singley |date=August 27, 1997 |publisher=UPNE |access-date=August 27, 2017 |via=Google Books |isbn=978-0-87451-808-5 |archive-date=October 19, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171019044726/https://books.google.com/books?id=_UJXV7HYlaQC |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/faithsoffounding0000holm |url-access=registration |page=[https://archive.org/details/faithsoffounding0000holm/page/13 13] |quote=united states founded on calvinism. |title=The Faiths of the Founding Fathers |first=David L. |last=Holmes |date=May 1, 2006 |publisher=Oxford University Press, USA |access-date=August 27, 2017 |via=Internet Archive|isbn=978-0-19-530092-5 }}</ref>