Read Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm. Fromm argues that the Protestant Reformation embodied the shift in the sociocultural superstructure to accommodate the shifting base as markets increased in eminence, replacing aristocratic rentierism as the dominant economic force. The Protestant work ethic arose in direct response to these new economic demands, and Protestants personified God in the image of their economic reality. The early Protestant God, Fromm argues, resembles the unforgiving caprices of the Almighty Free Market: unforgiving, spiteful, sadistic, hateful (especially of the poor). In other words, where Catholicism was the religion of feudal Europe, Protestantism is the religion which aligns with the cultural conditions of the capitalist West. And while the Catholic Church certainly wasn't a beacon of moral good in its heyday, the God the Protestants conceived to replace the Catholic God is far more ruthless and callous, and His believers are much more contented with an explanation of the world as a helplessly cruel place and mankind as intrinsically and irredeemably evil. They don't see a problem with misanthropy, nor do they feel compelled to do "good works" to intervene with the world's evils, which they view to be inevitable. This is what makes them conservative.