Does Weber Actually Live in Guatemala?

Traditional Protestant Values in Contemporary Latin America

Abstract

In the 2010 article “Max Weber is Alive and Well, and Living in Guatemala: The Protestant Ethic Today”, Peter Berger argued that contemporary Pentecostal communities uphold an ascetic ethic akin to that of 16th-18th century Protestants, a topic Weber addressed in his well-known essay “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”. As per Berger’s analysis, the ascetic ethic serves as a catalyst for the “cultural revolution” occurring in Latin American countries, where Pentecostal church membership is growing, and this cultural shift should ultimately lead to accelerated economic and social development of these countries. But if the Pentecostal ethic has any influence at all on Latin American societies, it is becoming more and more obvious today that this influence is not the hypothetical “cultural revolution” that Berger predicted, at least not in terms of scope and nature. Using actual data, this essay analyzes the case of Guatemala, where the Protestant population has nearly doubled over the last 30 years, and shows that there is little chance that this rise has had a major influence on the socioeconomic processes occurring in this country. It appears that one of the primary causes of this situation is that the so-called traditional (ascetic) Protestant values, as described by Berger and Weber, can hardly be adapted to fit the circumstances of contemporary Latin American society, embedded in the globalized space of liberal consumer capitalism.