Integrating Religion into the Historical Mainstream: Recent Literature on Religion in the Federal Republic of Germany

摘要

THOSE discovering the growing number of writings on the religiousnhistory of the Federal Republic of Germany might be forgiven fornthinking that they had entered a parallel universe. To use the terminol-nogy popularized by M. Rainer Lepsius, Christian milieus have largely disinte-ngrated and their members been integrated into the mainstream of politicalnand economic life. Yet until recently, research on German Catholicism andnProtestantism has remained confined to confessional ghettos that manynmembers of these religious subcultures once sought to escape. The dozens ofnmonographs that have appeared in the last five years have yet to be incorporatedninto the central narratives that dominate the secular histories of the postwar era.nMany have still to be reviewed in non-religious journals. Edited volumes thatnpurport to analyze the many facets of the Federal Republic include few if anynchapters on religion.n1