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ABSTRACT
The catechetical genre not only has a long history in religious but also in political discourse. During the 18th century, catechisms were produced on a vast number of diverse subjects, ranging from secular ethics to sheep breeding. The catechism persisted throughout the 19th century and almost gave shape to the Manifesto of the Communist Party. By this time, however, some socialists were also sceptical of the genre; it was perceived as ambiguous. Catechisms are thus a focal point for changing understandings of politics and religion in 19th-century discourse. This article discusses the production and reception of early 19th-century ‘red’ or socialist catechisms to reveal how the ambiguity of the concept religion was negotiated in the context of the catechetical genre. By locating the debate on catechisms in the discourse on ideology, I show that this genre was a focal point for structural change in the semantic field of religion in modernity.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Kathleen Hellermann for her friendly and reliable help with finding sources, my copy-editor Anthony Mahler and the anonymous referees for their valuable comments on the earlier draft of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Anja Kirsch received her PhD from the University of Basel with a dissertation entitled ‘The Narrative Culture of a Secular Worldview’. The dissertation analyses character education in a secular state. She is currently a visiting assistant professor in the Science of Religion at the University of Bern and the programme coordinator for the joint doctoral programme in the study of religion at the University of Basel and the University of Zurich.
Notes
1 See the section ‘The development into a genre: catechisms in political discourse’ of this article.
2 I would like to thank Niels Schott very much for providing me with his unpublished dissertation.
3 There are, however, exceptions. John of Thoresby, Archbishop of York, commissioned a Lay Folks’ Catechism that was composed in 1357 by the Benedictine monk John Gaytryge. Helmut Zander points out that not all catechisms were published in the middle of the Central European confessional rivalry, but also at its geographical periphery in immediate vicinity to Islam. In 1504, for example, the cleric Diogo Ortiz de Villegas published a small catechism that he wrote in the Portuguese enclave of Ceuta in what is today Morocco (see Zander Citation2016, 177).
4 The formation of the catechism was, of course, a complex process. The first early modern Catholic catechisms were written outside of Europe, but the catechism was not yet a distinct genre. These texts used various names, including doctrina, enchiridion, and summa. And catechism could refer both to elaborate texts that resembled summa and addressed priests or theologians and to short or ‘small’ catechisms written for lay people (Flüchter Citation2017, 18–22).
5 While reading the Bible individually was part of 17th-century Pietism before it became common during the 19th century (see, e.g., Zander Citation2016, 368–369), it was not the Bible but catechisms that served as the main instruments for people to learn both how to read and basic Christian dogmas.
6 In the well-known preface, Luther complains:
The deplorable, miserable conditions which I recently observed when visiting the parishes have constrained and pressed me to put this catechism of Christian doctrine into this brief, plain, and simple form. How pitiable, so help me God, were the things I saw: the common man, especially in the villages, knows practically nothing of Christian doctrine, and many of the pastors are almost entirely incompetent and unable to teach. Yet all the people are supposed to be Christians, have been baptized, and receive the Holy Sacrament even though they do not know the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, or the Ten Commandments and live like poor animals of the barnyard and pigpen.
Young and inexperienced persons must be taught a single fixed form or they will easily become confused, and the result will be that all previous effort and labour will be lost. There should be no change, even though one may wish to improve the text. (Luther [Citation1529] Citation1986, n.p.)
7 The question-and-answer format was already common, but with Martin Luther's Small Catechism, it became the dominant form of all Christian catechisms (Flüchter Citation2017, 19).
8 Translating texts always means translating concepts. The role of the catechism in cultural translation was the topic of the conference ‘Comparing Catechisms – Entangling Christian History’, which was organised by Antje Flüchter and the research group ‘Transcultural Christianity: Jesuits in Asia and Europe’ and held at the University of Oslo in 2014. Contributions addressed Christian missions in confessional and pagan Europe, South and East Asia, and the Americas. The conference volume will be published in 2017. I would like to thank Antje Flüchter for providing me with her unpublished introduction.
9 The same seems true for Islam, which lacks a genuine catechetical tradition. Muslim catechisms were first published in the 19th century. They can thus be viewed as resulting from contact with Christianity (see Zander Citation2016, 190).
10 Lekah Tob has been interpreted as an early attempt to make ‘basic Jewish theological ideas […] accessible and recognizable to Christians’ (Faierstein Citation199Citation9, 332). The format of the catechism was supposed to make both religions comparable by transforming Judaism into a confession, which would help its legal acknowledgement (see Meyer Citation1967, 124). According to this perspective, the adoption of the alien catechetical genre gave shape to Jewish emancipation.
11 The label catechism was occasionally used before these texts. For example, in 1831, the German Sinologist Carl Friedrich Neumann translated an 18th-century Chinese text on monastic rules as The Catechism of the Shamans. Except for its title, this text did not, however, employ any further aspects to the traditional catechetical format.
12 It is tempting to interpret Buddhist catechisms as documenting how Christian semantics were used to understand a different culture. But this all-too-simple principle does not apply to Olcott's catechism, which was intended to be an ‘antidote to Christianity’ for Buddhists living in British Ceylon. To publish a ‘true’ Buddhist catechism, Olcott wanted the text to be officially authorized by Hikkaduve Sumangala, a leading Buddhist intellectual. But Olcott and Hikkaduve came to blows over their different understandings of Buddhism, and other Buddhists intervened, questioning Olcott's understanding of Buddhism (Bretfeld and Zander Citation2017, 472–485). I would like to thank Helmut Zander for providing me with the galley proofs of his and Sven Bretfeld's article on Olcott's catechism.
13 Early political catechisms include one from 1643 in which King Charles I of England allegedly provides the answers for its question-and-answer format, and a French ‘Catechism for the Court’ that was published as a protest against tax increases (Dufour Citation200Citation9, 35–36).
14 For example: Abbé Bexon's Catéchisme d’agriculture ou bibliothèque des gens de la campagne (1773); Christian August Wichmann's Katechismus der Schaafzucht zum Unterrichte für Schäfer und Schäferen-Herren (Citation1784); and Johann Herm Tops and Johann Wilhelm Berger's Wissenschaftlicher Katechismus, oder kleine Schul-Encyklopedie nöthiger und nützlicher Kenntnisse für junge Leute (Citation1789).
15 In the literature, the numbers range between 150 (Tosato-Rigo Citation2012, 165) and 200 catechisms, the number which Joseph Clarke (Citation2014, 1220) names in his review of Adrian Velicu's book Civic Catechisms.
16 As a multilingual nation, Switzerland is of particular interest for investigating how different languages lead to different conceptual traditions and reception cultures. While the French version of the 1798 Helvetic Constitution was entitled Catéchisme de la constitution hélvétique, its German translation read Erklärung der helvetischen Verfassung in Fragen und Antworten (An explanation of the Helvetic Constitution in questions and answers).
17 Throughout the 19th century, numerous constitutional catechisms emerged, such as Arthur J. Stansbury's Elementary Catechism on the Constitution of the United States (1828), Lewis Cruger's Catechism of the Constitution of the United States (1863), and John V. Overall's A Catechism of the Constitution of the United States of America (1895).
18 Strube does not only demonstrate that religion played a decisive role in early French socialism, but that 19th-century French socialism must be considered a new form of religiosity (see Citation2014, 140–141, 145, 161).
19 In total, 82 editions of the Catéchisme républicain appeared (Buttier Citation2011, 174), and it was suggested for use as the Catéchisme français in public elementary schools (Reichardt Citation1988, 324).
20 ‘Homme libre, Français, républicain par choix; Né pour aimer mon frère et servir ma patrie, Vivre de mon travail ou de mon industrie, Abhorrer l’esclavage et me soumettre aux lois’ (La Chabeaussière [Citation1793/Citation94] Citation1848, 3; in German: La Chabeaussière Citation1839, 7).
21 The German version includes paragraphs on the human soul and on life after death. God is also more present in the German translation as the creator who provides human beings with specific abilities (La Chabeaussière Citation1839, 9–10).
22 After the French Revolution, religions were referred to as ‘cultes’ to indicate their legal status as private associations. Cult was thus not really a pejorative term, but rather referred to French constitutional law and juridical discourse.
23 Lahautière met Swiss radicals when he fled to the French speaking part of Switzerland to escape punishment for demonstrating against the death penalty in France. A German version of his text was printed by a radical publishing house in Biel (see Schieder Citation1963, 296–297).
24 In the late 1830s, communist became a popular self-designation in France, a collective term for proactive political groups, and, concurrently, a (still diffuse) concept for labelling a political system. At least beginning in 1842, the term communist entered into common language; it denoted theories that were based on the elimination of private property so as to establish an egalitarian society (Schieder Citation1982, 471–473). From France, the term spread to other countries.
25 Weitling's Die Menschheit appeared at about the same time as Alexandre Delhasse's Catéchisme démocratique in Belgium and Albert Laponneraye's Catéchisme démocratique in France. Besides the title, both shared the catchy question-and-answer format. The latter was supposed to become the founding document of the League of the Just, but was soon dropped in favour of Weitling's Die Menschheit (Seidel-Höppner Citation1974, 179).
26 ‘Diese Schrift, auf welche die Zürcherische Regierung die Hauptanklage gegen den Verfasser stützte, enthält das Aergste, was der Communismus ausgebrütet hat. Fast alles wurde zwar durch den tobenden Schneider [Weitling] von den Franzosen entlehnt’.
27 When one reads Heine, it becomes clear, however, that this conclusion would be too simple. Heine uses Christian vocabulary to criticise the fanatic character of socialist politics. He denounces the journeymen as being at the core of an ‘army of lack of faith’. These German craftsmen ‘profess a belief in the most blatant atheism’ (Heine [Citation1854] Citation1969, 767).
28 It is worth noting that Cabet's work was by no means free from religious influences. Over the years, he developed a specific Christian outlook and took an active part in religious discourse with writings such as the five-volume book series Le vrai christianisme suivant Jésus Christ. His so-called Icarian Communism stands in both a specific narrative tradition as well as a religious tradition.
29 In 1844 an earlier version of this text was anonymously published in the radical socialist newspaper Vorwärts! in Paris, but this version lacked a paragraph on religion.
30 ‘[Es] ist noch keine Einigkeit da, unser Verhältnis zur religiösen Partei sowie zu der radikalen Bourgeoisie ist noch nicht klar erkannt, ein einfaches kommunistisches Glaubensbekenntnis, das allen zur Richtschnur dienen könnte, noch nicht aufgestellt’.
31 ‘Drittens muß ein kurzes kommunistisches Glaubensbekenntnis aufgestellt werden, daß in allen europäischen Sprachen gedruckt und in alle Länder verbreitet wird. Dieses ist ein besonders wichtiger Punkt […], damit wir endlich einmal über das, was wir wollen, völlig klar werden’.
32 Because this transcript of the June draft also seems to reflect Engels’ style, some have suspected that he was the primary author. But this is disputable. Carl Schill (an alias of Karl Schapper) signed the draft in the name and on the mandate of the Communist League. It is therefore likely that the body of the Communist League produced the draft, which only appears heavily influenced by Engels because he used his own language in his transcript (see Hunt Citation1974, 187). What also argues against Engels being the primary author is that he later wrote the ‘Principles of Communism’, which were explicitly meant as a counterproposal to the June draft.
33 ‘Frage 22. Verwerfen die Kommunisten die bestehenden Religionen? Antwort. – Alle bisherigen Religionen waren der Ausdruck geschichtlicher Entwicklungsstufen einzelner Völker und Volksmassen. Der Kommunismus ist aber diejenige geschichtliche Entwicklungsstufe, die alle bestehenden Religionen überflüssig macht und aufhebt’ (Communist League and Friedrich Engels [Citation1847] Citation1970, 470–475).
34 In the article ‘Proletarier!’, published in the trial edition of the Kommunistische Zeitschrift, the probable author Karl Schapper declared the draft ‘an easily comprehensible communist confession of faith’, which ‘should in the future serve as a guideline for our propaganda’ (ein leicht faßliches kommunistisches Glaubensbekenntnis’, das ‘künftighin unserer Propaganda als Richtschnur dienen soll’).
35 ‘Dem Mosi hab ich, ganz unter uns, einen höllischen Streich gespielt. Er hatte richtig ein gottvoll verbessertes Glaubensbekenntniß durchgesetzt. Vorigen Freitag nun nahm ich dies im Kreise vor, Frage für Frage, und war noch nicht an der Hälfte angekommen als die Leute sich für Satisfaits erklärten. Ohne alle Opposition ließ ich mich beauftragen ein neues zu entwerfen, was nun nächsten Freitag im Kreis wird diskutirt und hinter dem Rücken der Gemeinden nach London geschickt werden. Das darf aber natürlich kein Teufel merken, sonst werden wir Alle abgesetzt, und es gibt einen Mordscandal’.
36 ‘Überleg Dir doch das Glaubensbekenntnis etwas. Ich glaube, wir tun am besten, wir lassen die Katechismusform weg und titulieren das Ding: Kommunistisches Manifest. Da darin mehr oder weniger Geschichte erzählt werden muß, paßt die bisherige Form gar nicht’.
37 The word manifesto has undergone a chequered history. Before gaining acceptance in politics, it was a technical term in trade and maritime law. In the 16th century, a manifesto was an instrument for distributing the decisions of the political authorities. In the 18th century, it became a medium of the political opposition. During the 19th century, the manifesto developed into a political genre of its own, featuring certain characteristics such as public accessibility, a particular style and diction, and a critique of the existing social order accompanied by a call to action. A manifesto is normally signed either individually or by a group (see Klatt and Lorenz Citation2011, 8–10, 23).
38 Dufour is well aware of the difficulty of this distinction:
We shall say that a catechism is strictly political when it deals with the political behaviour of citizens without making reference to God or Man in general. Accordingly, some revolutionary catechisms can be said strictly political, but a lot of them can also be said only half-political for, very often, God appears but is left in the background, or stays anonymous. This is the case with most of the prerevolutionary philosophical catechisms. (Citation2009, 42)
39 For a nuanced overview of the historical situation in the 19th century, see Osterhammel (Citation2014, 873–901).
40 To what extent this emerged from a shared romantic tradition that affected not only arts but also politics has been the subject of several studies. In a nutshell, see Strube (Citation2016b, 57–62).
41 ‘[W]ir, die wir den Satz vertheidigen, daß die Religion Privatsache, sind mehr in Harmonie mit den Grundprinzipien unserer Partei und obendrein bei weitem radikaler als Diejenigen, denen in der Bekämpfung der Religion selbst eine gewisse Religiosität (sehr gut!) oder richtiger, ein Rest von Pfafferei anhängt. Ich liebe die Pfaffen in keiner Gestalt, und die Antipfaffen genau so wenig wie die richtigen. (Bravo!)’ (Protokoll Citation1890, 202).
42 Recent research (Tenfelde Citation2008, 338) has pointed out that the Social Democrats’ attempts to end the discussion on the role of religion remained theory-driven and programme-centric, and lacked any reflection on the actual religious beliefs and practices of ordinary party members. But Social Democratic rhetoric frequently borrowed language from religious discourse: political versions of the Lord's Prayer, the credo, the Decalogue and popular chants were very common in social democracy. These texts were often meant as a parody, but not always (Grote Citation1968, 177–202).
43 An English translation of this text was recently published: see Richter (Citation2011).
44 With its focus on the political and industrial revolutions of the Sattelzeit (1750–1850), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe neglects religious discourse. The only reference to religious discourse is in the article ‘Säkularisation, Säkularisierung’ (secularisation). Furthermore, the project is restricted to the German-speaking world (see Koselleck Citation1979a, xiv).