清教徒主义对物质文明精神文明的影响.docVIP

Puritanism’s guidance on the material and spiritual civilization progress Introduction Puritanism has an important influence on the American history and it affects almost every aspects of its society. In the early American, it promoted the individual emancipation, contributed to the establishment of a modern labor, occupational and wealth view and outlined future national goal. All these laid the foundation to the values of the American mainstream culture and built Americas national character. At the same time, Puritanism is of significance in guiding the material and ideological progress in our society. Material and spiritual civilization play important roles in the development of the society. Material civilization is the starting point of the existence and development of our society and it is the foundation and premise of spiritual civilization. Spiritual civilization is the ideological guarantees of the material civilization and it provides the motivation to the development of the material civilization. Puritanism reveals the relationship of material and spiritual civilization. “The essence of the Puritan spirit can be concluded by one sentence said by John Wesley who is a famous Puritan evangelist in 18th century in America, ‘Desperately to make money, desperately to save money and desperately to donate money’.”Desperately to make and save money shows their ideas of advocating asceticism, frugality and encouraging investment on the social production. Desperately to donate money shows their advocates of paying attention to the feedback to the society. Not only should they earn money from the society but also should contribution to the society. Their ideas of making money are important for us to development material civilization. Besides, in the commercial activity, they obey the standards of honesty, integrity, responsibility and etc. They also think highly of education and all these are of important in guiding the construction of spiritual and material civiliz