[1] His advisor was sociologist of religion Robert Neelly Bellah.
Specifically, Gorski sees Calvinism as crucial to the emergence of the Netherlands and Prussia as strong, centralized states, because of its emphasis on discipline and public order.
The effects of Calvinism could be seen in social welfare, crime rates, in education, in military effectiveness, in financial responsibility, and many other parts of Dutch and Prussian social life, all of which increased their ability to form bureaucratic states.
[6] Where in the Netherlands the effect of Calvinism was from the ground upward, as most of its population was indeed Calvinist, in Prussia—where most of the population was Lutheran and only the royal house was Calvinist—the effect was from the rulers downward (to some extent through the Pietist Lutheran movement, which was influenced by Calvinism).
[citation needed] With co-author, Samuel L. Perry, in 2022, Gorski traced a history of white Christian nationalism from the late seventeenth century to contemporary times, in order to demonstrate its previously unrealized influence upon democracy, violence, responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, the USA election of 2020, and the 2021 insurrection at the USA Capitol in Washington, D.C.