Yes, there's a connection. In the U.S., both the marketplace and God as the spiritual embodiment of the marketplace are harsh disciplinarians who demand a pious, subservient working class.
Joel Blau Doug Henwood wrote:
Yoshie loves to tell us how the workers are religious, but they're not terribly religious in the Western European social democracies, where the working classes have historically been among the strongest in the world (and remain stronger than the euroland elite would like). It's hard to say which came first, mass secularism or working class strength, but it does seem they go together. The American working class, by contrast, is pious and weak. Connection? Doug
