Friedrich Julius Stahl
We live in an age of willful deception. Deception that extends to the foundations of our modern social arrangement. We congratulate ourselves, slap ourselves on the back, while looking down on our benighted forebears. We have come so far!
The first deception concerns what is called freedom of religion. We continually preen ourselves about the freedom we think we have, the freedom to believe whatever we want or indeed to believe nothing at all. And then our tolerance. Aren’t we tolerant. Our Western societies are by far the most tolerant to have ever existed. We make room for differences of opinion and differences of belief without penalizing those who think or believe differently from ourselves.
At least, these are the myths around which our society is structured. But they simply don’t hold water. Freedom of religion turns out to be freedom from religion, or even worse: carte blanche for secular religion, the religion of humanity, to establish itself as a de facto public faith, allowing of no rivals. Case in point: if Christians stand up and demand that their religious beliefs find reflection in public life, they find themselves beaten down by the charge of intolerance.
And that is the other deception. The requirement of tolerance turns out to be something quite different than advertised. Tolerance turns out to mean indifference toward religion and indeed any form of objective truth. In fact, it means the in-tolerance of objective truth. The only thing we are to be tolerant of, it turns out, is radical subjectivism. But then we find ourselves engaged in a free-for-all of opinions seeking power, the better to impose themselves on other opinions.
The war against truth, against reality, against objective standards and values, continues unabated and seems to be nearing its peak. But truth and reality have a nasty habit of avenging themselves on the false and the delusional. Stahl’s book provides a dose of just that truth and reality. It is a salutary antidote to that calamitous trend. Written when these matters were just beginning to establish their hegemony across Western civilization, it reads as if it could have been written today. And the solutions it offers are likewise every bit as relevant as they were in 1847 and 1855 and 1856, when it was written.
The Christian State comprises translations of three of Stahl’s works dealing with these subjects: Der christliche Staat und sein Verhaltniß zu Deismus und Judenthum: eine durch die Verhandlungen des Vereinigten Landtags hervorgerufene Abhandlung [The Christian State and Its Relationship to Deism and Judaism: A Treatise Prompted by the Proceedings of the National Assembly], Berlin: L. Oemigke, 18471 and 18582; Ueber christliche Toleranz [On Christian Tolerance], Berlin: W. Schultze, 1855; Wider Bunsen [Against Bunsen], Berlin: Wilhelm Herz, 1856.
Information
Print ISBN: 978-90-76660-84-4
Trim Size: 5.000" x 8.000"
Paperback: Perfect Bound
Page Count: 219
Retail Price: $14.99/£11.99/€13.99
Publication date: December 10th, 2025
Advance copies available upon request