Jonathan D. Teubner is lecturer in religion and politics and associate director of the Initiative on Religion, Politics, and Conflict at the University of Virginia.
The post-Auschwitz consensus that made overt anti-Semitism strictly forbidden is rapidly fading.
Emboldened by the Revolution of 1848 and by later attempts by the dominant Protestant church to purify itself, German secularists began to craft their beliefs, behavior, and sense of belonging along the lines of a Konfession.
Far from being the hope of cosmopolitan liberal democracy, Europe is experiencing a reemergence of the national identities and antagonisms that European values and the union they were meant to bring about were supposed to prevent.