Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany
eBook - PDF

Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany

The Rise of the Fourth Confession

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany

The Rise of the Fourth Confession

About this book

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.

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Yes, you can access Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany by Todd H. Weir in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & European History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half-title page
  3. Title page
  4. Copyright page
  5. Contents
  6. List of Figures and Maps
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. Abbreviations
  9. Time Line of Organized Secularism in Germany and Berlin
  10. Introduction
  11. 1 Dissidence and Confession, 1845 to 1847
  12. 2 Free Religious Worldview: From Christian Rationalism to Naturalistic Monism
  13. 3 The Sociology of Dissent: Free Religion and Popular Science
  14. 4 Politics and Free Religion in the 1860s and 1870s
  15. 5 Secularism in the Berlin Kulturkampf, 1869–1880
  16. 6 From Worldview to Ethics: Secularism and the “Jewish Question,” 1878–1892
  17. 7 Secularism in Wilhelmine Germany
  18. Epilogue: German Secularism after 1914
  19. Appendix: Membership Statistics of the Principal Secularist Organizations
  20. Bibliography
  21. Index