askchapo

i'm not watching a 3+ hour video before attempting to answer. but personally, i think protestantism and capitalism developed alongside one another.

the more power and wealth accumulated by the nascent bourgeoisie class and the more they were able to enclose the commons for privatized exploitation, then too the more feudal theocratic catholicism represented an oppressive regime. a new ideology had to develop, and there was no shortage of legitimate complaints to be had with the church, so it wasn't hard to find rebellious theologians to fund and support:

the nascent bourgeois naturally chose to provide funding and support to theologians like luther, zwingli, and calvin rather than theologians like hus and hesse. there's a selection bias leading to a feedback mechanism whereby the protestant ideas that got the most widespread adoption by the ruling class were the ones funded by that class. ideas from the radical reformation like the anabaptist movement, on the other hand, tended to get brutally suppressed by both the church and the bourgeois, much like the waldensians and fraticelli before them.

so yes, the fact that "protestantism" took hold and became widely adopted by the ruling class was a direct consequence of the birth of a new ruling class with interests opposed to the old ruling class. it's not like there weren't heretical movements throughout church history. but luther got money and support from some german merchants sufficiently far from papal authority that their wealth protected him enough to publish. many words have been written already about the role of the printing press in the spread of lutheranism, but not much that i've seen about the role of capital in funding those printing presses.