Happy 300th birthday, Ben Franklin (#35; Topic H)

Today marks the 300th birthday anniversary of Benjamin Franklin. Among his many achievements, he was the founder of the University of Pennsylvania, from its Wharton School I earned an MBA degree. So, in a way, I owe him a special debt. Early on, when reading Max Weber's highly acclaimed book, Protestantism and the Spirit of Capitalism, I was both pleased and puzzled by Franklin's being singled out as personifying the spirit of capitalism. Pleased because Franklin was superb in whatever he chose to do -- he was highly motivated; he excelled -- he certainly had high spirits. Puzzled because, it seems to me, protestantism was not his faith. He was a member of the Society of Friends, or a Quaker, as that organization is known -- it is also U Penn's nickname. In Quaker gatherings, everyone sits in silence; no one speaks. There are no preachers, certainly no preaching. One simply meditates. To my way of thinking, many of America's founding fathers were deists; Thomas Jefferson was one, George Washington was another -- and so was Franklin. This is understandable, since one reason for these founding fathers fleeing their fatherland was to avoid religious suffocation. Come to think of it, while Weber wrote many books on religion (and I have read quite a few), he never once defined what religion is.
Posted at 8:40 pm, Tuesday, January 17, 2006