impact of the Protestant Reformation on orientations to work?

Answer 1

Are you referring to the 'Protestant work ethic'?
I think it comes from 'the Devil finds work for idle hands.' Sitting with neighbours in their or my garden on sunny, summer afternoons, watching the children playing, the Swiss women used to knit. They actually believed and said that they weren't relaxing, but 'working.'
One day my next-door neighbour came to me and said that her vacuum cleaner wasn't working. I suspect she wanted to borrow mine. If that had happened to me, I might just have played the 'little woman' and waited 'til hubby came home, (except he wouldn't have believed I couldn't have fixed it myself). Anyway, she was in tears. 'When you un-plug it, do you pull the cable or the plug?'. 'The cable,' she answered,'my husband has often told me not to do that.'
'Can you give me a screwdriver?' - 'Hans has tools in the cellar.' So I went into her cellar, found a screwdriver and repaired the plug. After thanking me profusely she asked me where I had learnt to do that! Then she went on with her work.
There must be more to life than this!

Answer 2

Up until the Reformation, work was not appreciated and thought only for the rustics and no one else. However Luther basically said that one could be called to an occupation rather than the clergy (Beruft is the German work for calling and the Latin Based word "Vocation" had always meant a calling to church related roles). Per Max Weber's PROTESTANT ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM, Luther change the meaning of the word "Beruft" to mean called to anything.

The Reformation opened the doors to the advancement of Capitalism and in Calvin's work, success in your calling was made manifest in material goods and money that you had, so people then knew that they could earn a profit off their work.

Answer 3

While it's true that many Protestants embraced the idea that one ought to be busy all the time because idleness led to mischief, many also had the view that work was a consecrated thing, that any respectable occupation was a "calling" from God. Previously, the idea of a "calling" was limited to those who had embraced the religious life of priests, monks, or nuns.

This engendered a new respect for work of all sorts. The humble farmer or shoemaker was "called" by God to his profession just as surely as the minister was "called" to his.

While this did NOT lead to any leveling of society--believe me, there was still a hierarchy of social classes--it DID make trade more "respectable," especially in the areas influenced by Calvinism. Many people associated material wealth and success as a "sign" that they were one of the "elect," foreordained to go to Heaven.

So, working gained a degree of prestige that it had long lacked prior to the Reformation.