That’s exactly what Protestantism did, except I would actually say it’s somewhat worse; It maintained a lot of the ideas of self-sacrifice, but divorced them entirely from their material and communal base, instead making self-sacrifice in and of itself righteous. Secular asceticism, done not out of an obligation to one’s community or even to serve a spiritual nourishment, but out of obligation to an invisible god that one often believes doesn’t even exist.
That’s exactly what Protestantism did, except I would actually say it’s somewhat worse; It maintained a lot of the ideas of self-sacrifice, but divorced them entirely from their material and communal base, instead making self-sacrifice in and of itself righteous. Secular asceticism, done not out of an obligation to one’s community or even to serve a spiritual nourishment, but out of obligation to an invisible god that one often believes doesn’t even exist.
What sucks is there is plenty of good social change pushed for by the pre-protestant reformationists. groups like the Anabaptists