Gerhard Emmanuel "Gerry" Lenski, Jr. (August 13, 1924 – December 7, 2015) was an American sociologist known for contributions to the sociology of religion, social inequality, and introducing the ecological-evolutionary theory.
[5] He defines religion as "a system of beliefs about the nature of force(s) ultimately shaping man's destiny and the practices associated therewith, shared by the members of a group.
[6] A reviewer in Commentary described the book as a "major achievement" in an often-neglected subfield,[7] and Robert Wuthnow has referred to this volume as "arguably one of a handful of 'classics' among contributions by American sociologists to the social scientific study of religion.
Lenski's findings supported basic hypotheses of Max Weber's work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
"In an early era, Protestant asceticism and dedication to work, as noted by both Wesley and Weber, seem to have been important patterns of action contributing to economic progress.
Instead, modern (white) Protestants and Jews had a high degree of "intellectual autonomy" that facilitated scientific and technical advance.
Some Catholic nations - such as France, Italy, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile - are quite highly industrialized, but none of them are leaders in the technological and scientific fields, nor do they seem likely to become so.
Recently [1963] some Brazilian Catholic social scientists compared their country's progress with that of the United States and concluded that the chief factor responsible for the differential rates of development is the religious heritage of the two nations.
Turgot, Adam Ferguson, John Millar, and Thomas Malthus, and in the 19th and 20th centuries by Charles Darwin, Lewis Henry Morgan, and Leslie White and the many biological evolutionists following him, to propose a more contemporary ecological and evolutionary theory of societal development from the Stone Age to the present.
With the acquisition of signals, and later, symbols, the ancestors of modern humans gained the critically important ability to share information acquired through individual experience.
These and other later advances in the technologies of communication and transportation laid the foundations for major developments in political and economic systems, social inequality, science, ideology, and other spheres of life.
A former president of the American Political Science Association, Heinz Eulau, described Power and Privilege as a "masterpiece of comparative social analysis" and Ralf Dahrendorf referred to it as "an imaginative and substantial work [and] an indispensable guide.