Czech Churches in Transition

Ivana Noble 

Introduction

This paper is only a small contribution to the detailed analysis which is needed of the processes which happened in various Christian churches in the Czech Republic after the fall of communism. My starting point is not the characteristics of the different denominations, neither will I be describing what has happened to the churches and with the churches in reference to either the international or local character of each given church, to its general or selective membership or to the episcopal or presbyterial structure - even if these aspects would present an interesting study in themselves. Instead I consider the common social, cultural and political situation in which the life of all the churches in this country was reshaped after 1989, and also how the churches responded to this new situation,[1] how it reshaped their ministry and their self-understanding, which new possibilities and which new problems have appeared and how the churches have dealt with them. Out of these I will pay special attention to their ways of coping with the sceptical attitudes towards the church institutions, so typical for the Czech post-communist society.[2] Do the churches contribute to this scepticism? And if so, how? Or do they subvert it by their spirituality and social communication, as they managed to do sometimes before 1989?[3] And if so, how? These are my main underlying questions.

To deal with them, I analyse first how the churches fought the ghost of the past. Then I sketch how well they fitted into the new milieu, in particular in relation to the growing non-institutional religiosity, and finally I examine reasons for the lack of trust in the churches, both those for which they themselves are responsible, and those caused by unrealistic expectations from the outside of the churches. In the conclusion I try to offer my own reflection on why it is important not to give up cultivating church institutions, and how this might be done.

Fighting the Ghost of Communism

By the ghost of the past I mean the communist heritage in the form of memories of the past, but also people connected with these memories, whether victimised by the past régime, or collaborating with the victimisers or caught somewhere in the middle, with the values and modes of behaviour the forty years of totalitarian regime established in this country.

As is known, the communist persecution of religion was more severe in Czechoslovakia than in surrounding countries such as Poland, Eastern Germany or even Hungary.[4] In the 1950s the plan was to eliminate religion from the life of people completely, whilst in the 1970s it was to allow religious institutions to exist publicly, but to divide, corrupt and control them from within. The distrust created between Catholics and non-Catholics[5] was more and more complemented by the distrust cutting through each church. Effective institutional instruments of this were the so-called peace associations; from the side of the World Council of Churches, the Christian Peace Conference,[6] which especially after the Soviet invasion became an association of pro-communist Christians, and on the Catholic side, the priests' association Pacem in Terris, established in 1971.[7] Membership of these organizations in most cases coincided with collaboration with the secret police, who were still more numerous in the churches, especially from 1970s onwards. Thus Christians who were active in the struggle against communist oppression were often confronted and persecuted not only by the state authorities, but also by their own church leadership. And if there was not active opposition, then at least there was the prevailing indifference of those who claimed that in order to be allowed to practice Christianity, they could not get politically involved, which let the communist control prevail, and often alienated those who, motivated by their Christian faith, struggled for justice.[8] This was most apparent in the reactions of Christians to Charter 77.[9]

Another division between those who collaborated with the regime and those who did not was caused, in the Roman Catholic Church, by the fact that only part of the church operated officially, while another part lived a life of active dissent. This part of the Roman Catholic church, known as the underground church, the hidden church or the ecclesia silentii had its roots in the 1960's, when the first big amnesties for political prisoners were given, and many Catholics brought from prison a different way of understanding the church and her mission, which combined their own experiences and the challenge brought by Vatican II. When new waves of persecution came after 1968, these people were ready to initiate alternative education, pastoral care, and when once again confronted by the danger of the total destruction of all official church structures, even an alternative hierarchy. Although this alternative was initially welcomed by the anti-communist Vatican, and its protagonists were motivated by loyalty to the pope and to the wider church, its development, especially the ordinations of married priests and bishops and of women priests and deacons, was not accepted by the official Czechoslovak Episcopal Conference and by the Vatican after 1989, even if the memory of their work and also their presence still influence the life of the whole Roman Catholic Church, as well as contributing to ecumenical cooperation.[10]

This takes me to the issues of memory at present. Or rather, I should speak of conflicting memories, memories of the martyrs, memories of the lapsi, memories of solidarity as well as of alienation. The churches have to deal with these at several levels.

First, as I said before, memories are connected with the people who operate with them. Without wanting to opt for a Donatist solution,[11] it has to be said that in the decade after the Velvet Revolution a number of bishops, especially in the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, but also other church leaders, who were uncovered as collaborators of the secret police still continued in their offices, without any form of public distancing from the past, not to speak of penance. This led both to opposition to much needed reforms in the churches and to the growing mistrust of their institutions both from within and without.

The unwillingness to take responsibility for the past is combined with what is true in society in general as well as in the churches, that most of the people who experienced communism were in some way victimised by that regime: whether because they could not get the job they wanted, they could not study, they could not travel, they could not say what they thought, they could not practise religion as freely as they wanted. I will leave aside for the moment the important issue of external and internal freedom, and concentrate on the problem of wanting to compensate for these problems after 1989. It sometimes appeared as if the fact that "I" have been denied something in the past would legitimate taking my standpoint as something which should be given a priority over the standpoints of others. This claim to a "higher ground" formed a mentality of privileges and exclusions within our churches. In relation to abroad it found an expression in convictions that only in our lands had a true incorrupt form of Christianity been kept, while the West had been corrupted by liberalism.[12] Inside the country it led to a polarisation and anti-dialogical atmosphere, where the alternatives coming out of the times of communism became divisions - so, for example, the Catholic and Hussite Theological Faculties sacked people who were admitted after 1989 and did not conform to the neo-totalitarian line of leadership in the 1990s.[13] To this day the relationship to the ecclesia silentii has numbered among the polarising issues, and perhaps in a slightly less violent form, among the Hussite and Protestant Christians openness to liturgical reforms presents another issue. Too much energy is spent in fighting for the "right" Christianity, whether fundamentalist or liberal, and for finding an enemy who is responsible for the crisis of the church identity now, in the time of relative political freedom, when people expected it to flourish.

This leads me to the third issue connected with memory - which is more positive - namely the memories of discernment of what was alive and what was dead in the Christianity of the second half of the 20^th century in Czechoslovak society and culture. The discernment was practical - it grew from the need of believers to decide where they were willing to invest their energies, what would be worth risking persecution for, and what not. And this practical discernment is becoming current again, as active working Christians live much busier lives, and the commitment to some form of religious practice is done at the expense of other things which would not fit to the time schedule. Often memories of small alternative flat communities, memories of belonging, of solidarity, of celebrations, of friendship and trust, of spiritual stimulation make these values again desirable and call for appropriation of the discernment in the new circumstances. Yet there is also a danger that this appropriation of memories of what was functional before will give up when it comes to spending energy on the transformation of the church institutions into bodies where these values can find their home. I would say that this danger is now bigger than the one that Christians would not sufficiently communicate with the society in which they live.[14]

"No" to Churches, "Yes" to the New Forms of Religiosity [15]

Our society is no longer predominantly atheist, even if less then a third of the population claims to have a religious affiliation. According to the large-scale European Values Study of 1999[16] only about 8% of the population would claim to be convinced atheists. Both the lapsed atheists and those who left the churches are moving to new types of non-institutional religiosity.[17] Belief in a personal God is on the decrease, belief in something that is above us, in some form of spiritual power, on the increase. Issues of retribution, life after death, as well as of whether it is possible to communicate with this spiritual power, are back in circulation, but they do not usually come with a desire to know religious doctrine, to observe traditional rituals, or even with a correspondence between religious convictions and daily behaviour.[18]

Yet a growing percentage of the population expects that religion can bring something important to their life. Usually, however, they do not expect it from traditional religious institutions. There is an interesting comparison of answers from the research done in 1991, just after the Velvet Revolution, and in 1999 to the following questions: "Do you think that (your) church gives adequate answers to: (a) moral problems and the needs of an individual; (b) problems of family life; (c) spiritual needs of people; (d) present social problems. In 1991 on average 21.4% of respondents did not know (with the exception of social issues, there it was 30,6%), in 1999 on average only about 18 % did not know. There was a still bigger decline among those who responded positively; 45% in 1991 became 29.8 % in 1999. Those who no longer did not know or no longer said "yes" in 1999 increased the negative answers from 31.3% in 1991 to 52.2 % in 1999, a difference of close on 21%. The best result was in answers to spiritual needs, 63.3 % of "yes" in 1991 decreased to 56.7 %, whilst the worst result was in answers to present social problems, where an already low 25.9% of yes in 1991 decreased to 12.6 % in 1999.[19]

Does this then mean that about one in five Czechs has had a negative experience with the church? Or at least, that the hopes people had concerning churches' contribution to the life of the society after the Velvet Revolution were not fulfilled? And if so, does it mean that their expectations were unrealistic or that the churches did not cope well with the new situation or both?

Support and Subversion of the Lack of Trust to the Churches

Let me now try to give at least some provisional answers to these questions, as I interpret the sociological data, and to look at the reasons churches have given themselves for not to be trusted, as well as at the reasons coming from unrealistic expectations of others.

Along with the democratic changes in the society churches had to develop a different mode of presenting their life as free and equal participants in society.[20] Yet their own sources for redefining their roles and their place in the wider social context were limited. As I pointed out in the previous part, churches themselves have struggled with the communist past. Former political disidents returned to active church life, but at the same time former collaborators stayed for another decade in high church offices and represented the church in society, as well as making decisions concerning the directions churches were to take.[21] Individual Christians or Christian groups, took part in establishing whole sets of fruitful new ways of social interaction, whether by means of establishing new educational, social or other institutions, spiritual centres, or by means of participating in what was already there, and bringing a new spirit and new ways of working there. Yet, similarly as in the communist times, they often had to face hostility within their own churches,[22] with the difference that inner church affairs have now become publicly more visible. There have been new possibilities of support, not only financial, from Christians and churches abroad, and new possibilities of drawing on experiences, spiritual as well as social resources from various international Christian organisations or religious orders, with whom we had only a limited, if any contact at all, before the Velvet revolution. Often it was easier to find allies at an international level, where there was no problematic dealing with the same events yet different memories.

The involvement of Christians and of the churches in politics has played a significant role in their gaining or losing trust. A number of Christian political disidents became leading personalities of political life after the Velvet revolution and managed to keep the respect of others.[23] Besides that, there were several attempts to make religion a part of politics in ways that would return us to a pre-modern world. At the beginning of the 1990s there were proposals from the churches to re-introduce compulsory religious education in schools, which usually stalled at the question of which denomination's teaching would be represented. Churches intervened in state legislation concerning "sexual issues" like the registered partnership of homosexuals, abortion or legalisation of prostitution, often arguing by references to natural law or to other forms of universalist explanations which most people did not share. Their political engagement was accompanied by another factor of social visibility, the fact that the churches publicly campaigned against their "infidels", who they felt insinuated alternative ways of thinking into their life, or on the other hand, those who were marginalised by their own institutions also gave public accounts of their cases.[24] This public exchange was perhaps helpful for the churches, because it reminded them that they exist within a wider society, to which they are also accountable, but for people who did not know the church problems from inside it was a source of confusion. But perhaps there was one positive contribution, that these affairs confronted others with the fact that there were different and diverse voices among Christians.

Restitutions were another area which made the churches visible, but not always in a favourable light. It is true that the communist state had stolen property from the churches, had confiscated monasteries, some churches, parish houses, church hospitals, schools, and other buildings, as well as lands, fields, forests, orchards, vineyards, ponds, etc. After 1989 it was possible to claim this property back. It has to be said that the buildings which were to serve others were returned in pitiful conditions. Yet during the process of restitutions the churches were often depicted as mean, money-seeking institutions, often very unjustly, sometimes justly. This was in part because the business of restitutions attracted people in the churches or representing them who saw the possibility of making business, changing charitable institutions into places for making money.[25] Restitutions also raised more serious questions, as to how far into history one can go in order to reestablish justice. If we restore the pre-communist ownership of property would not we also restore the injustices present in there? And is it possible to restore the past, if the social participants after 1989 are different, including their different attitude towards religion? Here to expect the churches to know answers to the questions, which no one in the society knew, was highly unrealistic. Yet the negative feeling towards them was strengthened.

The last but not least important area that especially at the beginning of the 1990s contributed to the negative image of the churches included negative experiences with foreign missionaries, especially pentecostal preachers and healers from America and Germany. Street evangelisation presenting simplistic forms of conversion and no community where people could continue in the converted life, stadiums full of people who came to be healed or to see miracles were much more visible than the people undergoing a deep personal transformation as a result of a religious conversion at church. Yet both were happening, even if the public with a certain liking for curiosities preferred to see the more esoteric. But it also has to be said that the mass evangelisations had a long term negative effect for a number of people who came there with openness to religion and with expectations of finding a new wholeness and new meaning in their lives. When they experienced that the healing or the conversion did not come in the ways they were promised, these people often unreflectedly generalised that all Christianity is like that, and refused it as something naive at best.[26]

So, to sum up, there were plenty of opportunities to have negative experiences with the churches, whether related to how they dealt with the communist past, how they were trying to influence politics, how they dealt with restitutions, how they persecuted their own members or how they presented the Gospel to the crowds. But in all these areas, with the exception of the internal church conflicts, people could have positive experiences as well. Yet these would often be attributed only to the individuals, their personal qualities, their spirituality, and only accidentally connected with the fact that a number of Christians working in the public sphere for others were also active church members. The negative image of the churches was largely not subverted even by the encounters with active and humanly attractive Christians largely because of the common privatised view of religion.[27]

Concerning the unrealistic expectations, it has to be said, that not only did the churches not know how to redefine their role and their place as free and equal members of the wider society, but other members in the wider society did not know how to redefine their attitude towards the churches either. They did not appreciate how deep the crisis of communism was for them, and thus moved from extremely high expectations that the churches would be moral and spiritual forerunners of society, that they could provide a whole alternative net of care, for which the government would not have money, to thinking that they were more corrupt and more run by self-interest than other social institutions, which, moreover, had no profit from supporting the churches.[28] It also has to be said that a large number of ex-atheists expected the churches to confirm their prejudice. And this might be also one of the reasons why even if they rehabilitated some forms of religiosity, they did not want to link it with their commitment to anything which would be beyond their control, anything where God - or indeed, the Spirit - would not only blow where it wills, but also mediate divine will through a corruptible institution, such as a church.

An interesting comparison was offered last year by the media, when the 15th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution was being celebrated. The newspapers were full of images of Václav Malý and Cardinal Tomášek[29] talking to the crowds, defending human rights, while if there are any images of the Czech church leaders after that, we might see Cardinal Vlk carrying the skull of St Venceslas. The previous images confront us with what the churches could have become, the latter with what they did become.[30] The difficult role of the churches in the society should not lead to resignation or to justifying the clumsiness and vices of the churches. If we want to be faithful to what we proclaim, there must be also ways of reading the present position of the churches as a call for leaving the old and discovering a new life, something which is also in our memory from the past, something which is in the tradition of our experience and our discernment.

Conclusion

When I spoke of memory in this article, I said that conflicts often come from the fact that people have different memories of the same events. It can be further said that where memories are dealt with as something static, unchangeable, something which gives me (or my group) my identity, they prevent open communication with others, their memories and their identities, and thus they prevent healing, where needed. As we could see when it came to ways of dealing with the communist past, memories are carried by the people who are connected with them, whether as their proclaimers, their victims or both. Working with them influences what these people can become. Similarly memories of different churches do influence what else the churches can become in the future. Not in the sense that the historical possibilities would repeat themselves, but at least in the form of seeing alternative values which can be lived out even in a different setting.

Perhaps one of the most difficult things at present times is to have reasons for hope for the churches. Hope for their future, while people both from outside as well as inside of the churches are confronted with the hard baggage of their instututional realities. Yet, as a post-communist country, we also have an experience in our memory that when people in the 1950s left the church, because it was too difficult to stay, and they were convinced to strive to keep their Christian faith and Christian values independently of that, most of them did not manage. Their faith was not nurtured by the worshipping community, its symbols lost their importance, they were weakened in their motivation of why to struggle for an alternative form of life to the one prescribed by the regime.

The treasure which comes from these times is not that those who stuck to the faith managed to preserve it incorruptible and as such resistant to the changes in the future, but that in difficult times when truth seems to be of no value, we are reminded of being included into the wider memory of the Father, which provide us with various reasons for hope and various subversive strategies to live this hope out.[31] What might have changed for us now, that sometimes it feels harder to live out this hope inside of the church institutions, rather than in the wider society. To find meaningful forms of Christian existence liveable not only outside but also inside the church institutions is one of the big challenges.

Yet cultivating of the church institutions cannot be an end in itself, in the same way that looking after the good image of the churches in the society cannot be an end in itself. To our Christian life the first is necessary, the second may or may not accompany it, but both have to be seen in the context of the mission which we as Christians have, to proclaim the Kingdom of God, as we were commanded and shown by Christ. And here, perhaps, the spreading cry for spirituality and for alternative social communication present our mission with another challenge and an invitation to "bring out of our treasures what is new and what is old",[32] to bring into relation the wisdom of the traditions of spiritual and communal life, and as people open to the Spirit to allow them to be stretched in the encounter with new situations and new themes.

[1] My actual data deal with the three main churches according to the 2001 census, namely, the Roman Catholic Church, the Czech Brethren Evangelical Church (the main Protestant church in the country) and the Czechoslovak Hussite Church (an offshoot of the national Catholic modernist movement). 32% of the population in the Czech Republic claim to be Christian. Of these 27% are Roman Catholic, 1.1% Czech Brethren Evangelical, 1% Czechoslovac Hussite, and 2.9% other churches and religious institutions. Practically, however, as will be shown later and is true elsewhere, there are many fewer people active in the churches and yet many more interested in religious values and spirituality. See Náboženství v době společenských změn. Ed. J. HANUŠ, Masarykova Univerzita Brno, 1999.

[2] The Czechs together with Estonians, Bulgarians, Slovenians and Germans from the former Eastern part of Germany trust churches even less than other institutions. See N. BOGOMILOVA, "Reflections on the Contemporary Religious "Revival" Religion", Religion in Eastern Europe XXIV, 4 (August 2004), pp. 1-10, here p. 5. This attitude is complemented by a majority conviction that "the existence of churches ....[is] necessary or useful only for the care of old and sick people" D. LUŽNÝ and J. NAVRÁTILOVÁ, "Religion and Secularisation in the Czech Republic", Czech Sociological Review 9 (2001), 85-98: 95.

[3] An example of that was the involvement of Christians in Charter 77, or Cardinal Tomášek's spiritual authority in the country, connected with his plea for human rights, or in 1989 the number of parishes of different churches which were the centres of local Civic Forum.

[4] See e.g. S.P. RAMET, Nihil Obstat: Religion, Politics and Social Change in East-Central Europe and Russia. Duke University Press, Durham-London, 1998, 53-144; P.BOCK, "Protestantism in Czechoslovakia and Poland", in Protestantism and Politics in Eastern Europe and Russia: The Communist and Post-Communist Eras. Ed. S.P. RAMET, Duke University Press, Durham-London, 1992; Prague Winter: Restrictions on Religious Freedom in Czechoslovakia Twenty Years after the Soviet Invasion. Puebla Institute, Washington D.C., 1998. I have offered a historical sketch of different stages of the persecution in I. DOLEJŠOVÁ, "Fundamentalism and Liberalism: Churches before and after the Velvet Revolution", Epworth Review 3 (1999), 76-84.

[5] This had already started in the 1950s, when the state started with the programme of the total destruction of religion within one generation and the Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic Churches were the first to come under direct attack. For a detailed study see Církevní komise Ústředního výboru Komunistické strany Československa v letech 1948-1953,Ústav pro soudobé dějiny, Brno, 1994; K. KAPLAN, Stát a církev v Československu v letech 1948-1953. Doplněk, Brno, 1993 (Staat und Kirche in der Tschechoslowakei: Die kommunistischen Kirchenpolitik in den Jahren 1948-52. München, 1990); V. VAŠKO, "Církevně-politický vývoj Československa (1938-1989), in Pražské arcibiskupství 1344-1994. Eds. Z. HLEDÍKOVÁ a V. POLC, Zvon, Praha, 1994, 277-293.

[6] The World Council of Churches played a problematic role in collaboration, as did especially local Ecumenical councils in the communist countries. The Ecumenical Council of Churches in Czechoslovakia was founded in 1955, with the church representation approved by the communist regime. In 1958 the council together with the Comenius Faculty in Prague and Slovak Evangelical Faculty in Bratislava called a meeting that led to the formation of the Christian Peace Conference in 1959. It brought together Christian leaders from Communist Europe and initially also some West European Peace activists to discuss theological and social issues, yet its main line was given by the Soviet-bloc peace propaganda, and people from the Communist bloc who were active in the movement were seen as regime prominents and collaborators. See BOCK, "Protestantism in Czechoslovakia and Poland", 83-84.

[7] Even though this organization was condemned both by the Vatican and by Prague's Cardinal František Tomášek, till 1988 5% of priests in Bohemia and Slovakia, and 10% of priests in Moravia were members of this collaborative organization. See RAMET, Nihil Obstat, 124.

[8] "For the time being, the situation looks unsatisfactory, because official Christianity in our country has chosen either the path of cheap adaptability , whereby it has only exacerbated the sickness of socialism without being able to prevent harsh antagonism toward itself on the part of the system, or denied solidarity to its atheistic surroundings and proclaimed its faith so to say "defiantly", i.e., conscious of its sectarian differentiation and superiority. In my opinion, both represent a blocked path which has aggravated the crisis of the Christian communities as well as of the whole society." J. TROJAN, "Christian Existence in Socialist Society or the Theology of Conflict", Religion in Communist Dominated Areas 16, nos. 10-12 (1977), 162-163.

[9] See BOCK, "Protestantism in Czechoslovakia and Poland", 90-93.

[10] See P. FIALA a J.HANUŠ, Skrytá církev: Felix M. Davídek a společenství Koinótés. CDK, Brno, 1999; "Women's Ordination in the Silent Church", The Month 31 (1998), 282-288; "The Czech Catholic Church in a Democratic Society", The Month 32 (1999), 366-372; Církev v podzemí, Ročenka, Getsemany 1995.

[11] By this I mean a Donatist ecclesial elitism, where the church whose leaders did not collaborate was the only means of salvation and the only legitimate celebrant of the sacraments, whether before or after the lapse. I have dealt with this problem in greater detail in I. DOLEJŠOVÁ, "Augustine's Apologia of Authoritative Tradition", in Accounts of Hope: Problem of Method in Postmodern Apologia. Peter Lang, Bern-Berlin-Bruxelles, 2001, 85-92.

[12] P. Fiala and J. Hanuš summarize this problem sharply: "Today the Bohemian and Moravian Catholic Church includes circles who condemn outright Western attempts at democratisation of the Church as devilish. So the past decade is characterised by a certain amount of Church hypocrisy: yes to Western financial support, no to certain Western ideas." FIALA- HANUŠ, "The Czech Catholic Church in a Democratic Society", 369.

[13] The Catholic Faculty was dominated by the figure of Prof. Wolf, who as dean led the faculty not only to an extremely conservative Catholicism, but also to practices opposing the University law in selection of students or elections of faculty representatives, to such an extent that it endangered the faculty's remaining part of the Charles University. In the Hussite Faculty Prof. Kučera, when he succeeded dean Kubáč finished the contracts of all the younger lecturers in theology and philosophy whom Kubáč had admitted after 1989, and led the faculty to an expansion in terms of numbers of students and non-theological disciplines, yet at the expense of significant decrease of both qualified staff of pre-retirement age and students in the department of Hussite theology.

[14] See e.g. M. TOMKA, "Marginalizace a opozice jako motivy izolacionismu a konzervatismu východovropského katolicismu" in HANUŠ, Náboženství v doběì společenských změn, 91-109.

[15] For a more detailed analysis, see M. TOMKA, "Tendances de la religiosité et de l'orientation vers les Eglises en Europe de l'Est", Social Compass 49, n. 4, 540, 544-545: 547; Z. NEŠPOR, "Religious Processes in Contemporary Czech Society", Czech Sociological Review 3 (2004), 277-295; I. NOBLE, "Duchovní situace v ČR - výzvy, trendy a nová duchovní orientace", Křesťanská Revue 6 (2003), 151-158.

[16] The research EVS 1999 was prepared by Faculty of Social Sciences of the Masaryk University in Brno as a part of grant GAČR 403/99/0326 and the research ISSP 1999 followed the grant GAČR 403/99/1129 researched by the Sociological Institute of The Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. Both contributions were then put into practice by SC&C agency and their results were published by Jan Spousta in J. SPOUSTA, "České církve očima sociologických výzkumù", in Náboženství v době společenských změn. Ed. J. Hanuš, Masarykova Univerzita Brno, 1999, 73-90, as well as in a number of more popular essays and seminars.

[17] A Czech sociologist Jan Spousta identifies the following distinction. The former atheists move to what he calls "life after life" type. They do not believe in a personal God, may not pray or worship anywhere, but are convinced that there is some spiritual power of life, and that there is something like sin as well as life after death. This type is complemented by what Spousta calls a "meditative" type, which recruits from lapsed traditional believers. Similarly to ex-atheists, these people do not believe in a personal God, but in the spiritual power of life, but instead of an emphasis on some form of after-life, which most of them do not believe in, they stress some form of contact with the divine Spirit here and now, some form of prayer or meditation. See J. SPOUSTA "Náboženská typologie v ČR", manuscript of a lecture at the Institute of Ecumenical Studies in Prague, autumn 1999.

[18] Compare BOGOMILOVA, "Reflections on the Contemporary Religious "Revival" Religion", p. 7. Yet she also recognizes: "Of course, contained in the sum total of people with increased religiousness, there is a percentage of people for whom the change in religious behavior stems from a deep personal change, from spiritual growth, and is closely connected with a specific religious experience of the sacred. But such change and growth, which arrange the entire life world of a person around God and the sacred, are usually slow and painful; they are accessible only to a few." (p. 6-7)

[19] See SPOUSTA, "České církve očima sociologických výzkumù", p. 84, table 11.

[20] See for comparison V. HORVAT, "Church in Democratic Transition between the State and the Civil Society", Religion in Eastern Europe, XXIV, 2 (April 2004), 1-18, here 2. M. TOMKA, "Religion, Church, State and Civil Society in East-Central Europe", in Church-State Relations in Central and Eastern Europe. Ed. I. BOROWIK, Nomos, Krakow, 1999.

[21] Here the Czechoslovac Hussite Church was in the worst position, as there was no strong wing of former disidents and 1989 found the church in such a deprived situation, that she did not have the strength for renewal. Attempts to make public apologies and penance for the sins committed in the time of communism remained a minority voice, while the bishops appointed in the communist times together with lay people who were supporting them ran the church for another decade, which resulted in a further weakening of the church, and a number of gifted people leaving it. E.g. from the students who prepared themselves for the priestly ministry in my generation, there are less than one third of them still working for the church. Most of them left after conflicts with this hierarchy.

[22] This would be less true of the Czech Bretheren Evangelical Church, but in the Roman Catholic Church or in the Czechoslovak Hussite Church there is a number of examples, a popular Christian journal AD, which had to face a lot of opposition, and finally ceased to exist, The Institute of Ecumenical Studies, which both the Roman Catholic and the Hussite hierarchy in the early stages of its life persecuted as something dangerous for the churches, or in the protestant circles a pastroral centre for homosexuals, Logos, had to survive through a lot of hostility.

[23] Among others I can mention Radim Palouš, the first post-communist rector of the Charles University, Jan Sokol, an ex-minister of education and also a candidate for the presidency during the last elections, or Svatopluk Karásek, a protestant pastor who returned from exile and is now one of the most popular members of the parliament.

[24] An example of that was the Catholic Theological Faculty dismissing theologians of non-right wing orientation such as Tomáš Halík or Ivan Štampach, or the controversies concerning the silent church, or the cases presented especially in television Nova, like "Dudovi" or "Štampach leaving Roman Catholic Church". In print see reflection on these controversies, J. JANDOUREK, T. HALÍK, Ptal jsem se cest. Praha, 1997; J. HANUŠ, Snění v plné bdělosti. Rozhovory s Odilonem Ivanem Štampachem. CDK, Brno, 1997; J. KONZAL, Zpověď tajného biskupa. (Dialogue with Bob Fliedr), Praha, 1998.

[25] This was e.g. the case of a charitable home turned into a hotel in Mariánské Lázně. Or another unsuccessful attempt bringing churches into disrepute were the church banks, so called "Kampeličky", which went bankrupt, and people were not returned the money.

[26] See also my article, I. NOBLE, "Conversion and Postmodernism", in Bekehrung und Identität: Ökumene als Spannung zwischen Fremdem und Vertrautem. Ed. D. HELLER, Verlag Otto Lembeck, Franfurt, 2003, 45-68.

[27] This is not only a Czech phenomenon, but something typical for post-Christian Europe, see also M. TOMKA, "Contradictions of secularism and the preservations of the sacred", in Secularisation and Social Integration. Papers in Honor of Karel Dobbealaere. Eds. R. WILSON, B. BILLIET, Leuven University Press, Leuven, 1998.

[28] In the Czech Republic there is still no complete division of the church and state, and the state continues to pay the clergy's salaries, a practice which started in the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the Enlightenment, and was continued even through the communist times, as it strengthened the dependence and docility of the churches. It has continued till now with the argument that the churches would no longer be able to survive on the basis of believers' donations and their own resources. See also BOCK, "Protestantism in Czechoslovakia and Poland", pp.101-103.

[29] Václav Malý, in 1989 a Roman Catholic priest without a state permission, signator of Charter 77, well known human rights activist, one of the leading figures of Civic Forum, became an aufiliary bishop of Prague in 1997, and since then has been much more engaged in the inner church affairs. Cardinal Tomášek became a public defender of human rights under the influence of the new pope John Paul II in 1978, and in 1989 he was a well-known figure, having a large influence on how the Velvet Revolution was conducted. He died in 1992, but already in 1991 he had already been succeded by Miloslav Vlk as archbishop of Prague.

[30] For this comparison I am grateful to my husband Tim Noble.

[31] Here I am inspired by how this Augustinian concept of memory was developed by J.B. Metz in his notion of dangerous memory, which helped him to think of ways of doing theology after the World War II experience. See e.g. J.B. METZ, "Anamnestic Reason: A Theologian's Remark on the Crisis in the Geisteswissenschaften" in Cultural-Political Interventions in the Unfinished Project of Enlightenment. Eds. A. HONNETH, T. McCARTHY, C. OFFE and A. WELLMER, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 1992, 189-194.

[32] A paraphrase of Mt 13, 52.