This attitude, the Protestant work ethic, still influences Americans today.

We know this because today the work ethic is no longer a Protestant, Western phenomenon.

Finally, the work ethic.

And six, the work ethic.

Max Weber thought that was peculiarly Protestant.

Who's got the work ethic now?

So, you're calling for a global ethic.

In fact, the West has lost its work ethic.

But it so happened he was speaking in a Protestant Church.

Northern Ireland, Catholic, Protestant, children's choir and ended with Bono in Dublin

Those who do are inconsistent with the ethic of our work.

CA But, surely a true global ethic is for someone to say,

So I believe that we have an ethic that the Earth grows our food, and we need to move to an ethic in this century that the Earth should grow our homes.

We saw scientific revolutions, the Protestant Reformation, constitutional democracies possible where they had not been possible before.

Instead, what we got was Martin Luther's 95 Theses, the Protestant Reformation, and, you know, the Thirty Years' War.

I don't know, some kind of two legged breathing ethic, I might still be in one piece.

Any culture can get the work ethic if the institutions are there to create the incentive to work.

And we believe that the people of this country are also now global citizens and will support that ethic.

When the early Protestant immigrants came to this country, they brought the idea that work was the way to God and heaven.

From 1859, Protestant missionaries from America started to arrive, and the Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches also became actively involved in missionary work.

I have a little bit of a problem with this American family ethic... that seems to have hypnotized the whole country.

And we thought, sustainability has grown into being this sort of neo Protestant idea that it has to hurt in order to do good.

He'll be travelling from country to country, continent to continent, and still have the same work ethic, you know what I mean?

You know, we had to be taught to renounce the powerful conservation ethic we developed during the Great Depression and World War Il.

And we're getting great reports back from corporate Ghana, corporate West Africa, and the things that they're most impressed about is work ethic.

And there are certainly many people in the audience who will be cheering you on as you seek to advance this global ethic.

When you are brought up as a Catholic, you think that if you ever set foot in a Protestant Church, you'll be struck dead at the threshold.

Can you picture, in our lifetimes, a politician ever going out on a platform of the kind of full form global ethic, global citizenship?

So the great project of our generation, it seems to me, is to build for the first time, out of a global ethic and our global ability to communicate and organize together, a truly global society, built on that ethic but with institutions that can serve that global society and make for a different future.

But I'll tell you what happened to me in Ireland during the Troubles, 10 years ago, and I was working with some Catholic and Protestant kids on conflict resolution.

I believe there is a moral sense and a global ethic that commands attention from people of every religion and every faith, and people of no faith.

I think every religion, every faith, and I'm not just talking here to people of faith or religion it has this global ethic at the center of its credo.

And whether it's Jewish or whether it's Muslim or whether it's Hindu, or whether it's Sikh, the same global ethic is at the heart of each of these religions.

No, we may hang on, despite the huge burdens of debt that we've accumulated, despite the evidence that we've lost our work ethic and other parts of our historical mojo.

It is very important to recognize that this reform of institutions is the next stage after agreeing upon ourselves that there is a clear ethic upon which we can build.

We do not have the basis of a proper partnership for the future, and yet, out of people's desire for a global ethic and a global society that can be done.

Combine the power of a global ethic with the power of our ability to communicate and organize globally, with the challenges that we now face, most of which are global in their nature.

I'm just wondering whether you can see that changing over time, whether you see in Britain that there are changing attitudes, and that people are actually more supportive of the kind of global ethic that you talk about.

One of the reasons why an institution is not in itself enough is that we have got to persuade people around the world to change their behavior as well, so you need that global ethic of fairness and responsibility across the generations.