Confession, Secularism, and Dissent in the German Vormärz

At the end of the nineteenth century, many German church leaders viewed popular natural science and secularist worldviews as forces that were outside of, and indeed hostile to Christianity. Yet, earlier in the century, the churches had accommodated divergent positions on science and worldview. This chapter argues that rising confessionalism and the dynamics of dissent in the German Vormärz led to an externalization of these positions from the Christian Churches, in the form of the Free Religious Congregations of the Deutschkatholiken and Lichtfreunde. The chapter focusses on the Kingdom of Prussia and the Protestant Church, but it incorporates parallel developments within Catholicism and Judaism, because these were essential to the cross-confessional dynamics of politics and religious dissent that came to a head in the years 1845 to 1847 and resulted in the permanent transformation of Germany’s confessional system