RELIGION. Germany is generally considered a strongly Protestant nation, though the Protes tant element numbers somewhat less than two thirds of the total population. The number of Protestants in 1900 was 35,231,000, or about 63 per cent., as against 20,321,000 Catholics, or about 30 per cent. The proportionate distribu tion of these religious bodies has changed but little since the religious wars of the seventeenth century, and is characterized by a decided group ing within definite limits, corresponding to the States, or to smaller political divisions, so that in most localities one or the other religion is strong ly predominant. Some change in the relative pro portions of the two sects has been effected in the large cities as a result of the movement of popu lation, accompanying their recent growth. Cen tral Germany is, generally speaking, the strong hold of Protestantism, and the Rhine and Danube regions of Catholicism. More than one-third of the population of Prussia consists of Roman Catholics, who are especially numerous in Posen, Silesia, Westphalia, and the Rhine Province. In Bavaria, Alsace-Lorraine, and Baden the Catho lics far outnumber the Protestants. In Saxony, together with the eighteen minor States, there are only 31 Catholics per 1000 of the popula tion, and they but little exceed this proportion throughout the greater part of Central Prussia. In Wiirttemberg and Hesse the Catholics form nearly one-third of the population.
The Protestant Church in Germany contrasts with that of America and England in that it is not split up into numerous rival factions. The adherents of the Church are divided between the two confessions, the Lutheran and the Reformed, and the United Evangelical Church (dating from 1817. and at first established only in Prussia), formed by a union of the Lutheran and Reformed bodies under State auspices. The largest Protes tant denomination outside of the Lutheran and Reformed bodies. that of the Baptists. numbers only about 30,000 members. This Evangelical Church is the most numerous body. By its latitudinarianism, the Protestant Church has re tained within its fold the followers of many widely different schools of thought. from ex
treme orthodoxy to rationalism. At the end of the nineteenth century the tendency toward rationalism in theology, which had long been so prominent in Germany, was apparently on the decline. In the last quarter of the cen tury a considerable element of the laboring class in the large centres of population had become divorced from any Church through the rise of the socialistic propaganda, the defection varying in intensity from passive indifference, growing out of the belief that the Church was in league with the present political order, to a radical opposi tion to all religion. The Protestant body has suffered much more severely from this movement than has the Catholic, the priesthood of the latter organization having been largely successful in checking the movement through their activity in establishing Catholic organizations for labor ing men. The most recent statistics show that the relative numbers of Catholics and Protes tants remain very nearly constant, the slight difference in favor of the Protestants being at tributable partly to the greater increase of the population in the Protestant provinces, and in part, also, to the fact that there is a greater de fection of Catholics to the Protestant Church than vice versa. The seceders from the Catholic Church after the Vatican Council of 1870 as sumed the name of Old Catholics, and this fac tion now numbers about 50,000. The Roman Catholics have concentrated their forces until they have become politically the strongest party in the Empire, and have consequently obtained certain advantageous concessions. The severe Prussian laws of 1873 directed against Ultra montanism, by attempting especially to limit and to control Catholic education, were repealed in 1887, and religious congregations—the Jesuits excepted—existing for charitable or contempla tive purposes, are allowed. The different branches of the Christian faith are subsidized by the indi vidual States, and in some the Jews are also supported.