Belgium 1830–2030: Liberalism

Belgium's First School War (1879–1884) represents a deeply contentious political and moral struggle between the Liberal government, led by Walthère Frère-Orban, and the Catholic Church regarding the direction of primary education. The pivotal law enacted on 1 July 1879, which was derisively termed the "law of misfortune" (loi de malheur) by the Catholic community, effectively stripped religious instruction from the public school curriculum. In response to this legislative change, bishops across the nation took decisive action by establishing their schools and withholding the sacraments from those who supported the public education system. As the political landscape shifted, a Liberal defeat in the elections of 1884 led to the repeal of this controversial law, highlighting the ongoing power struggle between secular and religious authorities in Belgium.

The Popelin affair was the 1888–1889 legal case in which the Brussels Court of Appeal, and then Belgium's Court of Cassation, refused to let Marie Popelin take the lawyer's oath. Popelin was the first woman in Belgium to earn a doctorate in law, and no Belgian law excluded women from the bar. The judges refused anyway, citing tradition and the "nature" of women.

Free inquiry is the principle that every claim may be tested by reason and evidence, with no church or state having the final word. On 20 November 1834, the Brussels lawyer Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen (1796–1862) and the educator Auguste Baron opened the Free University of Belgium (Université libre de Belgique), the forerunner of today’s ULB and VUB. It was a liberal answer to the Catholic university that Belgium’s bishops had founded in Mechelen that same year. Verhaegen only began using the term ‘free inquiry’ twenty years later.