Max Weber thought that was peculiarly Protestant.

But it so happened he was speaking in a Protestant Church.

In 1807, Robert Morrison, the first British Protestant missionary to China arrived in Guangzhou.

We know this because today the work ethic is no longer a Protestant, Western phenomenon.

We saw scientific revolutions, the Protestant Reformation, constitutional democracies possible where they had not been possible before.

Uzbekistan's system of religious education includes the Tashkent Islamic Institute, 10 madrassas and Orthodox and Protestant seminaries.

The Protestant International Church in Islamabad, for instance, is one of the best protected buildings in Pakistan.

Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions are the only denominations that benefit from confessional education in the school system.

And we thought, sustainability has grown into being this sort of neo Protestant idea that it has to hurt in order to do good.

The financial crisis is really a relatively small historic phenomenon, which has just accelerated this huge shift, which ends half a millennium of Western ascendancy.

The view that human rights instruments address the obligations of a State to its citizens and not obligations between States seems to be in ascendancy.

The private system includes two business colleges, five high schools and several elementary schools, most of which are affiliated with Roman Catholic and Protestant religious denominations.

If they gain ascendancy over you, they will become your enemies, and employ their hands and tongues with evil designs, and wish that you also became disbelievers.

If they gain ascendancy over you, they will become your enemies, and employ their hands and tongues with evil designs, and wish that you also became disbelievers.

When you are brought up as a Catholic, you think that if you ever set foot in a Protestant Church, you'll be struck dead at the threshold.

Most examples of violent crime by mentally ill people were committed first in England, and then in the US, often seeming politically motivated, even when mediated by religion. The first such case was likely that of Peter Berchet, a young Protestant, who felt that he had to kill the royal councilor Christopher Hatton, also a Protestant, whom Berchet believed to be a Catholic sympathizer.

After all, Pope Francis s native region, Latin America, is currently home to nearly half (44 ) of the world s Catholics. But the Catholic Church is increasingly losing out to Protestant competition there and elsewhere.

Its only allies in the region are Syria and Hezbollah. What s more, it is threatened by a de facto anti Iranian coalition of all other regional powers, united by their fear of Iranian ascendancy.

If they gain ascendancy over you, they will behave towards you as enemies and stretch out their hands as well as their tongues with evil intent they long for you to renounce your faith.

If they gain ascendancy over you, they will behave towards you as enemies and stretch out their hands as well as their tongues with evil intent they long for you to renounce your faith.

But with the ascendancy of a new crop of leaders committed to the fundamental transformation of African societies, we are confident that the social and economic circumstances of African peoples will be progressively improved.

Pull one thread the celibacy requirement for priests, for example and the whole edifice comes crashing down. Consider what has happened to liberalizing Protestant denominations, which, for all their good intentions, have lost adherents.

Starting in the autumn of 2008, a single program of ethics and religious culture will be offered to all pupils at the primary and secondary levels, replacing the current Roman Catholic, Protestant and moral education programs.

Instead of giving in to grief, depression, defeat in the face of that violence, Mairead hooked up with Betty a staunch Protestant and a staunch Catholic and they took to the streets to say, No more violence.

The Special Rapporteur stressed that the ascendancy of multiculturalism in all countries results from the historical need for peoples to feed themselves, conquer others, make war and trade, failing which there would have been neither interaction nor history.

I was in Ireland during the Troubles, 10 years ago, and I was working with some Catholic and Protestant kids on conflict resolution. And I did this with them a risky thing to do, because they were street kids.

The chiefs of his people, who did not believe, said He is only a man like you. He wishes to acquire ascendancy over you. If God had willed He would have sent down angels. We never heard this from our elders.

The chiefs of his people, who did not believe, said He is only a man like you. He wishes to acquire ascendancy over you. If God had willed He would have sent down angels. We never heard this from our elders.

They depended much less on foreign creditors than on domestic lenders. The Dutch model was exported to Britain in 1688, along with the political revolution that deposed the Catholic James II and put the Dutch Protestant William of Orange on the English throne.

Alas for them, however, the Flemish have no such desire. Belgium, after all, became an independent state in 1830, precisely in order to liberate the Catholic Flemish, as well as the Walloons, from being second class subjects in a Protestant Dutch monarchy.

Instead, it has helped Iran to gain a regional ascendancy that the country could never have achieved on its own. Instead of a democratic transformation, were the US to withdraw now, the Middle East would face a war of all against all for regional hegemony.

It was standard pre modern practice to overcome such differences with a formal disputation. In the early sixteenth century, the German princes attempted to settle the philosophical challenge presented by Protestant reformers by engaging Martin Luther to debate a prominent orthodox Catholic theologian, Johannes Eck.

The British economist Walter Bagehot replied at the time that there would probably be two competing world currencies, which he termed Latin and Teutonic. By Teutonic, Bagehot seemed to mean the Protestant world the United States, recovering from the Civil War, Germany, and Britain.

The modern tendency to regard economic differences in terms of religion was stimulated by Max Weber s reflections on the Protestant work ethic. But that interpretation is clearly unsatisfactory, and cannot account for the dynamism of the deeply Catholic world of Renaissance Italy and Flanders.

The parallel weakness of Olmert and Abbas has produced a parallel interest in a peace settlement. Indeed, both men hope for political survival through a peace agreement Olmert by means of new elections and Abbas by a referendum through which he can regain ascendancy over Hamas.

Governments have always worried about the flow and control of information, and our age is hardly the first to be strongly affected by dramatic changes in information technology. Gutenberg s printing press was important to the origins of the Protestant Reformation and the ensuing wars in Europe.

Consider Ireland, where for many years Catholics objected that if a vote were held within Northern Ireland, the two thirds Protestant majority would rule. Protestants replied that if a vote were held within the geographical area of the entire island, the two thirds Catholic majority would rule.

Gaelic is spoken by only about 80,000 of Scotland s 5.1 million inhabitants. Nor does religion play a discernible role while Roman Catholics used to fear independence as being liable to result in Protestant hegemony, today Catholics and Protestants are roughly equal in their support of Scotland s institutions.

It coincided with the peak of the West s belief in its soaring economic strength and perpetual global ascendancy. Today, with Europe increasingly seen as the sick man of the world s economy, even the whole continent s renunciation of nuclear energy would have little to no reverberation on the world stage.

With this in mind, the G 20 leaders set out an ambitious agenda for an inclusive and wide ranging response. If the Pittsburgh summit is not to be an anticlimactic end to the G 20 s ascendancy as a forum for decisive action, the momentum generated must be maintained.

This focus supported the ascendancy of inflation targeting as the favored monetary policy framework and, in turn, led to operational independence for central banks. The policy was a success the discipline imposed by strict and rigorous concentration on a sole objective enabled policymakers to control and then conquer inflation.

Pope Benedict, being from Germany, a predominantly Protestant country, does not carry the weight of this bitter history. Perhaps this is one reason why Alexi responded positively to Benedict s first speech urging reconciliation, saying that he hopes that this will improve Orthodox Catholic relations on the post Soviet territory.

A more confident and secure Japan would be better able to block China from gaining ascendancy in the western Pacific, thereby advancing the central US policy objective of ensuring a stable balance of power in Asia. No other country in the region could act as a credible counterweight to China.

It was as natural for an Elizabethan Protestant to see the cause of his mental discomfort in a government overrun by Catholic sympathizers as it is for someone with a Muslim connection in the US today to see this cause in America as the embodiment of Western offenses against the faith.

China would also have drawn comfort from the fact that, within the murky world of intra Tibetan politics, its anointed Karmapa, oddly, had the Dalai Lama s backing. Historically, the Dalai Lamas and Karmapa Lamas vied with each other for influence until the Dalai Lama s Gelug school gained ascendancy over the Kagyu order.