Todd H. Weir's new book is an important work that reminds us that secularism in nineteenth-century Germany was related to a number of other major intellectual, philosophical, cultural, and social trends. By carefully distinguishing between, on the one hand, secularization as an ongoing, uneven, and never fully completed process, and, on the other, secularism as a code and even a creed by which some nineteenth-century Germans actually lived, Weir advances considerably our understanding of modern religious culture and politics. He refers to secularism as a “fourth confession” in order to emphasize that it represented a coherent though shifting set of principles in the nineteenth century, and argues persuasively that it was related to traditions of rational dissent, Free Religion, monism, and the Freethought movement. Further, by deepening our understanding of modern secularism, Weir also provides fresh perspectives on such important nineteenth-century developments as the Kulturkampf, Otto von Bismarck's religious and political policies and positions, the connections between religion and popular science, and certain dimensions of radical politics.

The greatest strength of the book is that it does not proceed solely or exclusively at the level of an intellectual or ideological tale. To be sure, Weir makes telling analytical distinctions, where appropriate, among different philosophical positions within nineteenth-century secularism, traces its evolving set of principles from the 1840s to World War I, and shows its relationship to many other intellectual and religious movements of the day. At the same time, however, he devotes considerable attention to demonstrating precisely the organizational and civic cultures that were related to and helped sustain secularism as a coherent body of beliefs. The virtue of this approach is that it allows Weir to show the historical contexts of a deeply important but also fluid set of ideas. Clearly, to most Germans, secularism did not mean the same thing in the 1840s as it did in the 1880s. Weir provides the best guide we have to these important cultural shifts, which have been underappreciated or underestimated in the historical literature. He also modifies our perspective on a number of other nineteenth-century political, social, and intellectual developments, such as the early history of socialism, the ethical culture movement, some aspects of Jewish assimilation, and the rise of political antisemitism.

To pursue these many historiographical goals, Weir needs to be extremely precise when describing how secularism worked as a “fourth confession” in nineteenth-century Germany. One key to his argument is to complicate the notion of confession beyond legal and institutional boundaries to highlight confessional struggles over issues such as “the right to enter state service, the right to public worship, the right to clerical oversight of education, the right to determine the religious identity of the offspring of mixed marriages, etc.” (20). By analyzing cultural issues like these instead of doctrinal differences, Weir successfully shows how nineteenth-century secularists participated in a number of highly controversial debates that were often at the core of confessional identity in Germany. Further, he is able to show how secularism and secularists were influential well beyond their official institutional numbers in changing and shaping the attitudes and positions of other intellectual, political, and cultural movements such as left liberalism, popular science, and socialism—as these movements also debated and proposed answers to confessional questions. Secularism, according to Weir, thus paradoxically worked within a confessional framework or “field,” even as its more radical adherents attempted to dismantle or dissolve religion as a whole.

Weir's book also sheds light on highly specific aspects and settings of secularism in nineteenth-century Germany. For example, it explores the inner workings of free religious congregations, especially the one in Berlin. Moreover, Weir's frequent use of a biographical approach to his topic reveals rich new insights about the careers of such figures as Ernst Haeckel, Johann Jacoby, and Eduard Lasker, among many others. As Weir states, “[T]his study reveals the extent to which much nineteenth-century biography, culture, and politics were shot through with secularism” (23).

Future scholars will have to contend with Weir's argument that secularism needs to stand alongside Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism as a “fourth confession” in nineteenth-century Germany. His study forcefully demonstrates that it was not simply the opposite of religion or the absence of religion, but rather that secularism articulated its own philosophical position, worked hard to create and maintain social and cultural communities that acknowledged and subscribed to this vision, and had a sizeable impact on modern Central European developments well into the twentieth century. Not surprisingly, Weir is already at work on a follow-up study that will examine the relationship of secularism to socialism, communism, and Nazism in the Weimar Republic.