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About us Practical matters How to find us T.H. (Todd) Weir, Prof

Research interests

My research has illuminated different dimensions of the encounter between secularism and religion in modern Europe. My first monograph Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The Rise of the Fourth Confession, Cambridge UP, 2014 (winner of the Jacques Barzun Prize for Cultural History) argued for the insertion of secularism into German religious history, not just as a force acting against the existing Christian confessions, but as a confessional force in its own right.

Over the past decade, I have been pushing this work into the twentieth century, demonstrating that the interwar period marked a second “culture war” in German history. My second monograph was Red Secularism: Socialism and Secularist Culture in Germany 1890 and 1933 (Cambridge UP, 2023). It examines the role of secularism in sociailst culture, and concludes by showing that antisecularism was a key element in the organization and radicalization of the political right in the late Weimar Republic.

More recently, I have been developing a research project on is the history of Weltanschauung/worldview in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 

As former director of the Centre for Religion and Heritage, I develop a series of collaborations with NGOs and university partners on the relationship of heritage to current transformations of the religious field, such as secularization, the rise of the postsecular, minority heritage and interreligious dialogue.

Publicaties

Säkularismus: Freireligiöse, Freidenker, Monisten, Humanisten

The Christian Front Against Godlessness: Anti-Secularism and the Demise of the Weimar Republic, 1928–1933

A European Culture War in the Twentieth Century? Antic-Catholicism and Anti-Bolshevism between Moscow, Berlin, and the Vatican 1922 to 1933

Germany and the new global history of secularism: Questioning the postcolonial genealogy

Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The Rise of the Fourth Confession

The Specter of “Godless Jewry”: Secularism and the “Jewish Question” in Late 19th-Century Germany

Introduction ‘Heritage, Religion and Mosques’: The Hilal Project

Otto Dibelius als Apologet der Zwischenkriegszeit: Sein Kampf gegen Säkularismus und Gottlosen-Bewegung

The Hunt for Red Secularism: Why Secular Studies have Trouble Accounting for Socialist Secularism

Bloomsbury Handbook on Religion and Heritage in Contemporary Europe

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Pers/media

Todd Weir appointed professor History of Christianity and Modern Culture

Nieuw boek van Todd Weir: Het Bloomsbury Handboek over religie en erfgoed in hedendaags Europa

Socialist Cultures and Politics of Secularism and Atheism

Zu schade zum Einreißen

Interview with Todd Weir, Director of the Centre for Religion and Heritage on the REBELAH project

Is Trump een fascist?

Sovjet-Unie zette ex-predikanten in als communistische apologeten

Door Erasmus+ gefinancierd REBELAH-project van start

History Now: Todd H. Weir

Il Patrimonio Religioso in un'Europa Multireligiosa

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