Alec Ryrie is the author of "Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World" and professor of Christian history at Durham University in England. The Reformation was one of the decisive events that made the world we live in, for better or worse. But if you think modern life is more than an endless bad-tempered argument, you may concede that Luther's Reformation gave us a few useful, if largely, unexpected gifts. But those have been rare, partly because Protestants are so ready to quarrel, but also because of the Reformation's third legacy to the modern world. If Protestantism has given the modern world these three legacies, did it also give us a fourth one, capitalism?

Source: CNN October 29, 2017 10:18 UTC