Weir's study of the origins of secularism sheds light on the first cracks in the edifice of what was once widely, yet erroneously, believed to have been a Christian state. We are introduced to marginal groups in Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century such as the German Catholics who followed the lead of Johannes Czerski and Johannes Ronge rather than the pope, ‘free religious’ congregations that could not subscribe to traditional biblical tenets, as well as monism and ‘ethical culture’ for the more esoterically minded. These numerically insignificant groups are variously termed the religious left, rationalist dissidents, radical rationalists, church radicals, rationalist deists or simply dissidents and make up what Weir calls a ‘fourth confession’. The supra-confessional mentality of these establishment critics probably has more than a little to do with freemasonry, a system of morality which Weir only mentions en passant. It is no secret that not a few Freigeister – liberals but also socialists (Wilhelm Liebknecht, August Bebel, Wilhelm Pieck) – enjoyed intellectual freedom in mainstream as well as ‘reform’ lodges. Materialism rooted in popularised accounts of science or, rather, pseudo-science, pantheism and atheism thus entered the German body politic. Weir touches upon aspects of an anti-Christian petit-bourgeois mindset which, in the twentieth century, proved very congenial to the belligerent anticlericalism of left-wing parties in the Weimar system and also to the poisonous nationalist, racist and antisemitic worldview of National Socialism. But Weir's focus is not so much on the religious or ideological superstructures as on the socio-economic base of these quasi-religious groups and the political manifestations of their religiosity. Links between lapsed Catholics and Protestants with early forms of political liberalism are discussed. The focus is purportedly on Berlin, though Saxony was arguably the stronghold of non-mainstream politicised pseudo-religion. While one expression of anticlerical secularism has survived up to the present day (the youth dedication rite) and the numbers choosing to pay the compulsory administrative fee to officially leave the mainstream Christian Churches has in recent decades been increasing exponentially (over 400,000 adults in 2014 alone), the ultimate goal of the secularist movement, namely to completely sever the operational ties and purse-strings binding the Church to the state in Germany, is far from being achieved. Today the German state is presided over by a man who is a pastor by profession (though that has not stopped him living in open adultery) and the daughter of another Lutheran pastor is in charge of the government. Ironically, in spite of the record number of annual exits the Churches are still raking in record receipts, literally billions of euros annually, in the form of church taxes and government subsidies. Sadly, secularism seems to have made its peace with this dysfunctional system which, today, is patronised by parties calling themselves ‘Christian’.