 Two texts, dating from late 1842 and early 1843, The Jewish Question, and “The Capacity of Present-Day Jews and Christians to Become Free,” elaborate Bauer’s critique of the religious consciousness and of political reformism. The consequence of their publication, however, was that Bauer forfeited his leading position in the opposition movement, as he challenged one of its central demands. The question was whether the explicitly Christian state of Prussia could eliminate restrictions on Jewish participation in civil institutions. While liberals and republicans advocated emancipation, conservative opponents defended the state’s exclusive confessional allegiance. Bauer’s interventions attacked the state for defending privilege, and claimed that it used religion as a mask for its interests in maintaining relations of subordination; but he also criticized Jews and their supporters for claiming freedom on the basis of a particular religious identity. Political and social freedom required the renunciation of all particularistic ties with the past; thus, as a precondition of juridical equality, Jews must renounce their religious allegiance, as must Christians. Christianity demonstrated a historically higher degree of consciousness, since it cancelled the externality of the deity. But this was not a unilateral progress upon Judaism, because Christianity, and especially Protestantism, generalized alienation to encompass all aspects of life. The superiority of Christianity consisted in its radical negativity, making requisite a transition to a new and higher form of ethical life. By exacerbating the contradiction between self-determination and self-abasement, the way was cleared for an epochal resolution. These interventions were censured by Marx, and by leading liberal spokesmen. Bauer remained adamant that his position was the correct progressive stance.