Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The Rise of the Fourth Confession
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Reprint, 6/23/2016
EAN 9781107614222, ISBN10: 1107614228
Paperback, 322 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
Negotiating the boundaries of the secular and of the religious is a core aspect of modern experience. In mid-nineteenth-century Germany, secularism emerged to oppose church establishment, conservative orthodoxy, and national division between Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. Yet, as historian Todd H. Weir argues in this provocative book, early secularism was not the opposite of religion. It developed in the rationalist dissent of Free Religion and, even as secularism took more atheistic forms in Freethought and Monism, it was subject to the forces of the confessional system it sought to dismantle. Similar to its religious competitors, it elaborated a clear worldview, sustained social milieus, and was integrated into the political system. Secularism was, in many ways, Germany's fourth confession. While challenging assumptions about the causes and course of the Kulturkampf and modern antisemitism, this study casts new light on the history of popular science, radical politics, and social reform.
Introduction
1. Dissidence and confession 1845 to 1847
2. Free religious worldview
from Christian rationalism to naturalistic monism
3. The sociology of dissent
free religion and popular science
4. Politics and free religion in the 1860s and 1870s
5. Secularism in the Berlin Kulturkampf 1869–80
6. From worldview to ethics
secularism and the 'Jewish Question' 1878–92
7. Secularism in Wilhelmine Germany
Epilogue
German secularism after 1914.