That brings us back to Hofstadter, who made the now largely forgotten point that American Protestants have long had a deep sympathy for The Market. Since they see humans as fallen, corrupt creatures always in need of a good kick in the ass, they revere it as a wonderful mechanism of social discipline, punishing the lazy and rewarding the hard-working. If people are poor, it's because they're immoral, impatient, or wasteful. ========================== But you'll find precisely these sentiments also expressed by Polish-American and Irish-American Catholics, for example, and even by traditionally liberal Jewish-Americans against the poor and unemployed - especially against the non-white poor and unemployed. Conversely, you've had populist and farmer-labour movements based on midWestern and Southern Protestants which have been hostile to capitalism and preached instead the compassionate message of the social gospel.
It's generally the economic conjuncture rather than any inherent religious or other cultural values which affects attitudes to capitalism, and equally so among different racial, religious, and ethnic groups. The analyses of capitalist ideology by Weber, Sombart, Tawney, Hoftstader, Bell and others are extremely valuable, but they err in viewing ideology as a cause rather than a reflection of economic and social development. Their own writings, in fact, were at least in part an ideological reaction to developments in their own times - aimed at the burgeoning influence of Marx and the historical materialists, and the threatening social movements which they inspired.