People today are really no smarter than our ancestors from thousands of years ago. One good reading of ancient literature makes the point obvious. So why, just in the last 500 years or so, have we seen such tremendous industrial and technological progress? Once again, world view takes center stage.
In a relatively short span of time, from the 1700s to the 1900s, the dominant forms of government throughout the world crumbled. Feudalism and monarchism became largely irrelevant, and have been almost universally replaced by a form of government called a republic. Even those countries with “kingdom” in their name, such as the United Kingdom or the Kingdom of Belgium, are actually governed by republican structures, with a well-dressed fancy figurehead. It doesn’t matter whether they’re democratic, totalitarian, communist, socialist, or capitalist in philosophy, most countries now have the word "republic" in their name, and there is one great similarity, that is, people vote for their leaders, who govern from a central location.
Simultaneous to industrialism, four major institutions swept across the world: public education, post offices, railroads, and the “represento-kit” style voting republic. Everywhere industrialism went, these four institutions appeared, for you need a literate, empowered, connected population to sustain the specialization and division of labor in an industrial economy. Feudalism and monarchy cannot sustain industrialism, even though they work just fine for an agricultural economy. So when the Confederate-minded southerners say that the “War Between the States” was not just about slavery, it was about their way of life, they are entirely correct. The Civil War was as much a war between agricultural feudalism and growing industrialism as it was over the moral principles of slavery and abolition. Industrialism does not tolerate feudal gentry and serfdom, just as American values of equal human rights does not tolerate slavery. And in a total war, industrial beats agricultural, plain and simple.
But why not two millennia ago? Greek and Roman scholars were certainly bright enough. Why didn’t they usher in the industrial revolution? At its simplest, there are two reasons: (1) wrong gods, and (2) wrong community.
The gods of the Greeks and Romans were capricious and immoral. The gods of the barbarians controlled nature with their unpredictable whims. The spirituality of the eastern religions taught people to accept a cycle of life and position in life that did not set their minds toward economic or industrial progress. Industrialism is not something that happens just among the elite; it sweeps through an entire nation, transforming every level of society, and the seeds must be sown at every level.
Historically, industrialism appears at the apex of Christian culture in Europe. Imagine a time and place in history when the underpinnings of Christian thought are so prevalent that the major conflict in society is not whether Christianity is relevant as the organizing principle of society, but what kind of Christianity is preferred. This is precisely the context of the Protestant Reformation. Upon reflection, the era we call the “Dark Ages” actually illuminated the path to industrial progress, for this is when Christendom covered the European continent.
Instead of capricious and morally questionable gods, or a natural world guided by mischievous spirits, the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” were predictable, well-designed, and good. The Christian God has revealed himself and His ways, not only in Scripture and in His Son, but in Nature, as Psalm 19 (NET) declares:
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the sky displays his handiwork.
Day after day it speaks out;
night after night it reveals his greatness.
There is no actual speech or word,
nor is its voice literally heard.
Yet its voice echoes throughout the earth;
its words carry to the distant horizon.
…
The law of the Lord is perfect
and preserves one’s life.
The rules set down by the Lord are reliable
and impart wisdom to the inexperienced.
The Lord’s precepts are fair
and make one joyful.
The Lord’s commands are pure
and give insight for life.
So with confidence, a culture viewing themselves as caretaker and overseer of Nature proceeded with a pragmatic streak. They harnessed the predictable laws of nature and created an industrial society based on order and precision, something no other culture yet seen in history was predisposed to do. Though many would follow.
The Protestant Reformation dovetailed perfectly with industrialism. While the Protestant work ethic captures much of the attention, at least two other contributions also laid the foundation, by the 1600s, for industrialization in the 1700s. First was the passion for distributing Scripture in the language of the common man, and thus encouraging universal literacy. Second was the strong emphasis on the priesthood of all believers, that is, each person’s accountability directly to God through Jesus Christ for salvation, rather than dependent on hierarchy and human authority. Both of these emphases flourished under Protestantism.
This turned out nicely for industrialists, for if you are going to fill a country with factories as well as farms, you need an educated and literate work force to make it happen. When the school bell brought children to read, it also taught them punctuality, something as essential on the factory line as understanding your instructions.
Education means empowerment, and a theological emphasis on universal priesthood drew attention to political implications of the same Scripture. Who could ignore Revelation 5:10 (KJV), where the Lord has “made us unto our God kings and priests and we shall reign on the earth.” The collective “we” took seriously both the theological and political implications, and democracy took a leap forward. But wait! The monarchs were powerless to stop the momentum, for if they denied the populace their newfound, literacy-enabled empowerment and enlightenment, they sent their country (literally) back into the Dark Ages, to their pre-industrial roots. And as we know, in a total war, industrial beats agricultural. Monarchs faced a pleasantly simple choice: become a figurehead, or lose your head.
Now, for an industrial economy to truly thrive, you need more than structural and political transformation. You need intangibles like peace, trust, and the ability to take a man at his word, a shared reliability on doing business on a handshake in the exchange of goods and services. So the nations that embraced Christianity the most, especially Protestant Christianity with its egalitarian streak, found themselves at the top of the industrial world. One of them became a global superpower.
To be sure, there is a dark side to industrialism, particularly in the history of colonialism and exploitation of other countries by industrial powers. Sometimes missionaries preceded the merchants, and helped prepare a peaceful transition. Unfortunately, it’s far too easy to surface examples where the missionaries came too late, or in collusion, or were agonizingly frustrated by the social and political forces that accompanied them.
There will always be controversy over how beneficial industrialism has been. An overall increase in life expectancy, real wages, successful eradication of diseases, and general health, on average across the globe, can be cited as benefits. There are many for whom the benefits are still unrealized; and even more scandalous, for many at the bottom the results have been devastating.
What I can affirm is that Christianity had a central role in making industrialization happen, which has been good especially when it was done right, with an emphasis on human rights as well as economic progress.
Next hurdle of civilization (2 of 3): cleared.
Mobilize 