Red Secularism

Todd H. Weir is Associate Professor of History of Christianity and Modern Culture in the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen. His previous monograph Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The Rise of the Fourth Confession (Cambridge 2014) won the Jacques Barzun Prize for Cultural History. He is also the co-editor of books on monism, apologetics and religious heritage.

'In a work of remarkable ambition and scope, Weir explores the complex relationship between socialism and secularism at a time when many workers retained ties to organized religion. Exposing the rifts within the German socialist movement over whether to pursue a radical secularist agenda, Weir's meticulous scholarship will be indispensable for all future scholars probing this relationship.' Mark Edward Ruff, author of The Battle for the Catholic Past in Germany, 1945–1980

• 1. Introducing socialism and secularism as two cultures; 2. Secularist culture in a working-class city: Berlin around 1890; 3. Prometheans: secularist intellectuals on the socialist stage; 4. The sociology and psychology of secularist intellectuals: dancing near the abyss; 5. Workers and worldview; 6. The politics of secularism 1905–1914; 7. Secularists in war and revolution 1914–1922; 8. Monism in the Weimar workers' culture movement; 9. Culture war at the end of the Weimar republic; Epilogue.