How Private Is Religion? Theological Debates on Private and Public Religion as a Background for Woellner’s Edict on Religion in Late Eighteenth-Century Prussia

Abstract

In 1788, the new king of Prussia Friedrich Wilhelm II published an edict on religion under the auspices of his minister of state, Johann Christoph Woellner. The edict is very often interpreted as the renunciation of the tolerant religious policy of the late Friedrich II, who is generally regarded by historians as a promoter of tolerance and enlightenment. In contrast, I argue that the edict needs to be seen in the context of theological arguments, formulated among others by theologians who understood themselves as enlightened, such as Johann Salomo Semler. They distinguish between a public religion bound to certain dogmas and a private religion, independent from institutionalized religion and leading to increasing religious insight. This distinction is implicitly taken as a basis for Woellner’s edict, where religious attitudes differing from the “mainstream” are permitted, but they are to be kept in the private sphere. To interpret the edict rather in context of so-called enlightenment theology then as part of the counter-enlightenment also challenges our interpretation of the enlightenment as epoch of tolerance and religious freedom.