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The names of Max Weber and Shmuel Eisenstadt are frequently mentioned together as two of the most important theorists of the process of modernization. Eisenstadt considered himself as a—critical—Weberian in this respect. This paper presents a critical analysis of Eisenstadt’s critical reading of Weber, in particular in a series of six important contributions to major volumes published by Wolfgang Schluchter in the 1980s on Max Weber’s sociology of religion. This analysis focuses in particular on the importance that the two authors ascribe to the religious factor in their respective visions of modernity, and compares their approach to politics and to the question of national identity in the context of modernization.