It was noted in Chap. 2 that while Weber’s treatment of action was flawed because it was not rooted in a theory of agency, his famous essay, The Protestant Ethic, did contain such a theory. Written before his description of how to study action, this essay he describes as ‘psychological’, essentially because it studies ‘subjective meaning’, especially in the form of motive. At the heart of Weber’s analysis is the difference between Calvinism and Lutheranism, the contrast being that while the latter allowed the spontaneous expression of emotion the former required constant self-control. To maintain agency when faced with the fear of damnation as well as sensuous temptation, the Calvinists were urged to engage in ‘agency repair’ actions. These included believing that they were among the elect while also seeing worldly success as evidence of God’s favour. Consequently, the Puritan’s life can be seen as one great agency maintenance action, one in which thoughtless habit was as much a threat to willpower as unrestrained impulse. It is concluded that Weber’s thesis is built around a theory of personal agency and thus that an emphasis on activism was a contribution that Protestantism made to the development of the modern world.