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FUNDAMENTALISM AND LIBERALISM:
CHURCHES BEFORE AND AFTER THE VELVET REVOLUTION
Ivana Noble
Controversy, at least in this age, does not lie between the hosts of heaven, Michael and his Angels on the one side, and the powers of evil on the other; but it is a sort of night battle, where each fights for himself, and friend and foe stand together. [1]
Situations of persecution have one important feature in common, namely, that they seem to provide people with "clear" ideas of who is an enemy and who is a friend. This was also the case in the former Czechoslovakia under the communist oppression. With the exception of Albania, Czechoslovakia had the strictest anti-religious policy in former communist Europe. The atheist state clearly proclaimed that the churches belong among those, who had to be destroyed completely. This attitude was justified by referring to Marx's claim that religion was "the opium of the people",[2] which was taken out of context and as such contributed to the programme of elimination of Christians.[3] Churches were directly controlled by the state, whose strategy moved from the plan of total destruction within one generation (in 1950s) to infiltration of their structures by the secret police and thus their subsequent collapse (from 1970s till 1989). In 1980s, when I was a seminarian, the ministers still needed state permission to practice their ministry (this was a "legal" practice since 1950), and if they were successful in addressing anyone other than the older generation of church-goers, or if they were politically active, they usually lost this permission. Any informal activities were forbidden under threat of prison. Religious orders had been banned since 1950 (with a short exception of 1968).[4] Anyone practising religion, which the constitution formally allowed, had to expect that their children would not get secondary or higher education and their job prospects would be limited. At the same time, as the collaboration of Christians with the secret police was a part of the scene, it was difficult to overlook courageous examples of people who, at great personal cost, communicated their belief as something which had a future. But how has the persecution influenced the inner dynamics of the churches, their development, their values and images, their relation with the wider society?
In this article I will deal with the problem of growing conflict between fundamentalism and liberalism in the churches in Czechoslovakia before the Velvet Revolution, which influences our present situation. I will consider its historical roots tied up with the different stages of persecution, and then, in the conclusion, visit a contemporary scene and look at the problem of polarisation within the churches, as well as at alternatives for a committed Christianity, which does not want to be caught in the "black and white" mentality. Although my case study will be located in the Czech Republic, I am aware that this problem of the divisions between the fundamentalists and the liberals runs through the churches and is not limited to the former communist Europe. Thus, I hope, that my local examination of it may shed some light on their analogical expressions in the situations of the readers. Now, first of all I will clarify the employed terminology.
1. Fundamentalism and Liberalism: Terminological Clarification
When I speak of fundamentalism and liberalism in this article, I have in mind extreme positions, which are a product of fear, of a threatened identity. Fundamentalism appeals to an indispensable fundament, without which people are seen as flattering in the wind, as plants without roots. Those, who hold the position understand themselves as the guardians of the fundament, which is usually identified with the sacred text of the Scriptures or with the holy tradition. They reject the critical and historical apprehension of their fundament and claim for their position a timeless relevance and a unquestionable authority. Liberalism appeals to liberty as the basic human right and value, and subjects to liberty any other right and value. It's proponents understand themselves as enlightened, as opposed to those who hold (however freely) different positions from their own. Thus liberalism operates with a limited notion of liberty, which is anti-dogmatic, anti-metaphysical and anti-hierarchical. It reconstructs the claimed essentials of Christian faith in a humanistic manner, heavily relying on the contribution of natural and social sciences, and aims at "religion without church and without miracles". While fundamentalism sees its enemy in the future (where the foundation may be lost), liberalism sees the enemy in the past (whose enforcing patterns may disable the future to be free). Indeed, both of the positions refer to important truths, one to preserving the tradition, the other to the permanent need of conversion, of reform and new adjustments of one and the same tradition. But my point is that as soon as the positions appear in the extreme and polarised form, they refer in a perverted manner, and as I am going to demonstrate, they are more concerned with their identity than with truth and thus are destructive of the church life and of a Christian witness in the society.
There is another problem connected with these labels, namely the problem of projection. I will return to this in the final section of the article, for the moment I just want to mention that the polarisation between fundamentalists and liberals is sometimes enforced from one side. Those who hold one extreme position tend to explain the alternatives they encounter in terms of the other extreme they feel obliged to oppose. Thus, for example, Christians, who persist that only our post-communist Christianity has kept the true foundations of belief unspoiled and prevented them from the dangerous developments in the West,[5] project their idea of "dangerous Western liberalism" to any position, which does not match their own, but requires critical self-reflection and widening of horizons with contemporary scholarship.[6] Also extreme liberals are in danger of projection. One example, a woman who was proud of her open mind allowing that each person believed something and that it did not matter what, asked with a seriousness and a child-like innocence, whether the church still believed that the earth was flat? Although, I like this example as a joke, and must say that there are situations, when I doubt the answer "no", it also shows a degree of the superiority complex people can exercise against those who do not match their standards of "liberty". As I said, a group or an individual which represents one extreme position may depict the rest of reality in other extreme colours, and therefore it is important to distinguish between this one sided polarised views and a genuine encounter of the extremes on both sides.
2. Historical development
None of us, either consciously or unconsciously, should allow a memory of justice and injustice, truth and lie, good and evil, the memory of reality as such to die away.[7]
The document of Charter 77 "Right to History", from which these words are taken, insists that it is vitally important to commemorate one's past and reflect upon it's truth-values, as they contribute to who we are today and who we are going to be tomorrow, whether as a society, as a church, or as individuals. In this part I am going to present a short historical overview of religious life in Czechoslovakia under the communist oppression, as I am convinced that it provides us with keys to unlock understanding of some present problems, namely those connected with the problem of ideological short-cuts to truth as we find them in the extremes of the fundamentalists or the liberals.
When in 1944 the Jalta Conference gave its final "yes" to the post-war divisions of Europe, and Czechoslovakia's political freedom was once again sacrificed, there was already a garniture of communist leaders trained in the Soviet Union for how to take over the country. One part of their training was how to deal with enemies of their programme, for which Stalin provided a sufficient amount of examples. Soon after the communist takeover in 1948 religion became the main targets of the new atheist totalitarian regime. The Central Action Committee of the National Front nominated a Church Commission of six political leaders presided by Alexej Čepička, the Minister of Justice, and the task of this commission was to prepare the final destruction of religious life within one generation.[8] For reaching this aim the communists built a myth that they were the successors of the liberal and secular tendencies strongly present in the country since industrialisation, when the churches with their feudal structures found it hard to respond to the new situation of the faithful, and even more strongly since the end of the First World War and the break-up of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. To be liberal in that time, meant to express one's liberty with regard to church, her worship, her teaching, and her policy. Although, social concerns were of religious origin, this was the time, when they were placed in the opposition to religion. Similarly to Nazi's aryanisation of the best figures of the Old and the New Testament, [9] the communists used for their ideological purposes the best people from our history, which was interpreted as the history of the emancipation of the working class, in which, e.g. Hus was seen as a social reformer and Comenius its teacher, and the church they were persecuted by, as the incarnation of dark powers.[10] The brutality of French and later Russian revolution was claimed to legitimate the "necessary" evil in dealing with as serious enemy as the church.
Since 1949 there were arrests of church representatives in Czechoslovakia. In 1950 were first people martyred and sentenced to decades or life imprisonment for "high treason". A process aiming at total destruction of religious life started. Its first enemies were the Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic Churches and the Jews. Protestant churches had partly more favourable attitude to Marxism and partly were of less interest, as they represented not more than 17% of population, [11] the Orthodox Church, which was very small, was used in the process of destruction of the Greek Catholic Church, to get religion under the Russian control. [12] The State Office for Religious Affairs, the claimed descendant of anti-religious liberalism - and the moving force of an atheist fundamentalism, exercised a strict control of all religious life. This was supported by the new laws legalising the state control of the churches, taking away their jurisdiction, property and making the churches economically dependent on the state benefits, as well as their activities on the state approval.[13] As the Decree No. 228/49, Collection of October 25, 1949 summarized: ‘The State Ecclesiastical Office, as a central board [it had a structure of local offices all over the country], exercises complete jurisdiction in ecclesiastical and religious matters'.[14]
One of the most striking examples of the exercised power of this new "jurisdiction" was a banning of religious orders. During the first months of 1950 the most active religious representatives were imprisoned, and this was a preparation for "Action Monasteries". On the night of 13th- 14th April the Security Sector of the Ministry of Internal Affairs alongside with People's Militia raided most of the male monasteries and convents (the rest were raided two weeks later at night from 27th to 28th April), and more than 2,000 religious men were interned in concentration labour camps. From August till October 1950 female monasteries were raided and similar destiny afflicted 10,000 of religious women from c. 720 monasteries and communities.[15] Most of the religious served in the captivity for five or six years, some died there of overwork or disease, some were moved to special army units, some to prison and released only in 1968.
But one did not have to be religious to be a candidate for persecution. In 1950s prisons contained a high number of Christians from different denominations, ministers as well as lay people. Churches were forced out of the social work, most of their publishing houses were closed down and the rest was given permissions only for selected publications. Religious organisations were banned. Religious education suffered severe limitations. Church schools were closed down, and only a small number of seminarians could study on the Theological Colleges controlled by the state and excluded from the Universities. When I was a seminarian, my professor of Old Testament remembered that in these years they had regular visits of the state officials saying that the college would be soon closed down and that in ten years there would be no believers, and with a smile he usually added, and I am still here and so are you.
In 1960 and in 1962 first big amnesties for political prisoners came, followed by others until 1968, which gave freedom also to many Christians, who brought from prison a different understanding of the church and her mission. F.M. Davídek, the founder of the silent church structure, summarises this very well in his essay 'Concrete Spiritual Work':
Reality - the reality of being - is in the mind of a Christian fatally often divided. God and the world stand against each other and a "Great Wall of China" is in between them. The world is seen as the realm of the enemy, in which are found all the negative characteristics: Christians cannot go there as they could lose their lives! ...The tragicomedy is in the fact that we do not want to sanctify and change the places in which we temporarily dwell, the places where faith, hope and love are fought for... The religious ideas, which give people the courage to gain heaven without having the courage to gain the world, are immature.[16]
These immature religious ideas assumed that Christians held unchangeable truths and practices. These, however, were not of much interest or use to the fellow prisoners. Instead, sanctification of the places in which we temporarily dwell, brought into religion a strong sense of human solidarity, need of hope and of a purpose, which would make a real difference to people. A need and simplicity of sacramental life and of education.[17] The short period of Prague spring meant also a public renewal of the church life carried by the reform of the Vatican II, new horizons of ecumenism and even a free dialogue between Christians and Marxists. This relative freedom, however, ended after the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies led by the Soviet Union in August 1968.
The period of "consolidation" was once again marked by repressions and fear. The policy towards churches grew from the general atmosphere, which was different than in 1950s, and is usually spoken of as a post-totalitarian regime. Václav Havel in the Power of the Powerless tells the story of an ordinary citizen, the greengrocer, who lives under the communist ideology and its demand of people to conform to the lie, to the fiction they do not believe. For this man in the story it is symbolized by the regular request to put up the communist slogan "Workers of the World Unite!" to his shop window. He does not believe in what he does, yet communicates what he does not believe as if he believed it. As Havel explains:
Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police aparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to pretend nothing. Individuals need not to believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfil the system, make the system, are the system.[18]
The post-totalitarian system was totalitarian in a different way, people were less ready to believe what they were told - and forced to repeat. Living with a lie affected also the churches and was tied up with a new facet of liberalism, namely not being "fanatic"about truth, as these people often said. In 1970s there was circa 10% of ministers who collaborated with secret police. The government also sponsored collaborating organisations, unfortunately, with a large membership, Pacem in Terris among the Catholics and Christian Peace Conference among the Protestant, Hussite and Orthodox clergy. These organisations claimed that socialism was concerned for the world peace and was wonderful also for churches and that the state guaranteed full religious freedom in the country. [19] Their members were rewarded by nominations to higher church offices or to teaching posts at the government controlled Theological Colleges, by the possibilities to publish and travel, or by money to repair their churches. Sváťa Karásek summarizes how many Christians looked at these organisations and their members:
It was a total fraud. We were ashamed that something like this resides in Prague. Some Catholic priests were in prison, but this and other injustice were not spoken about. It was a fraud peace without justice. And we considered it as a moral mud, we did not want to touch it and those who were members ...we detested. [20]
A significant part of the Catholic church life was represented by a religious dissent, the silent church (also called the underground church). Its idea initiated in 1950s prison experiences as a response to the danger of total destruction of official church structures, and to the need of being with people, where the official structures had not reached anyway.[21]
Fundamentalist responses to the collaboration used the "devil-language", but at the same time did not see a need to fight for different values in the wider society, which they understood as the realm of the enemy, as Davidek comprehended. To convert meant only one thing for them, to enter their religious system behind the "Chinese Wall". They left a wider understanding of conversion to be explored outside their communities.
Havel spoke of possibilities of such conversion: what if one day the greengrocer were to take down this slogan - what would happen to him (the lie-conformers would persecute him) and what would happen within him (he would start to live in t ruth)? These thoughts documented the vision of Charter 77 and other independent organisations, to raise people's consciousness to the conversion from the "life in lie" to the "life in truth". But what about religious conversion? In Havel's parable the greengrocer did not start to go to church and to recite creeds. What we see is a human conversion, metanoia, the change of heart.
In 1977 Czechoslovak government signed the Helsinki Accord and as a response to this two movements defending human rights appeared. These were Charter 77 and VONS (The Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Persecuted). In both a significant part of members were Christians, however, standing on their own, without support of their Church authorities in a better case, in a worse case, with the Church authorities persecuting them alongside with the state.[22] Up till 1989, Christians were divided in their attitude, whether to give a priority to the plea for human rights or to a self-preservation of the church structures. This tension was stronger for clergy than for lay people, as they were under a direct state control and were manipulated by state licence for ministry and its withdrawal. Š. Hájek and M. Plzák document: ‘In arguments with the professors at the Theological College we often heared: "If you do this and this, you won't get a state permission, and what account for it would you give to your conscience facing the parishes?' [23]
When Gorbachev's glasnost lightened the political oppression in Czechoslovakia, Christians called for religious liberty and a vital revision of church/synagogue-state relations. [24] During the Velvet Revolution in 1989 to struggle for the church self-preservation meant to struggle for human rights for everybody. Both, on local and on central levels Christian voices had authority in the changing society. Churches represented alternative to corrupt organisations run by the state, and as in the churches some freedom and independent thinking and acting was retained, they were a valuable help to the striking committees, which even, were often run by clergy. It also needs to be said that the Christians (in particular those in the position of authority) who collaborated in the past welcomed the changes only when it was sure that they were going to succeed. But their mentality of searching for advantages often was not cured and led to new fights for preservation of the totalitarian and post-totalitarian manners in the churches. The fundamentalist Christians saw in the changes God's angels acting against the powers of darkness as response to their prayers and assurance that their religion were right.
3. Conclusion: Contemporary Perspectives
In the introductory part of the article I asked a question of how has the persecution influenced the inner dynamics of the churches, their development, their values and images, their relation with the wider society? The following paragraphs demonstrated why it is difficult to give a simple answer to it. There has been so wide range of attitudes that generalisations are impossible. A different answer came from the one who claimed that the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia was of a comparable importance to Incarnation, was happy to overlook the cry of the persecuted and was thus allowed to enjoy the "liberty" of the powerful; and a different answer came from the one who experience prison or was hunted by the secret police, could not find work, and shared the experience of those who were in a way homeless in their society or sometimes even in their church; and a different answer was given by those who "sanctified" their ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,'[25] and appointed angels to act on their behalf. The valuable as well as the difficult heritage is a part of our contemporary scene, of which one may say that it is not totalitarian - yet is heavy loaded by ideologies of Western neo-liberal capitalism, of prosperity at the expense of the weak. Christian voices are divided. 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, when it "should" flourish. Perhaps as Havel dreamt about a conversion of the greengrocer to truth, so do the Christians in my country dream about deepening of our conversion, which would not put an opposition to the conformity to Christian teaching and Christian praxis, which would take away a desire to form mentality of privileges and exclusions. Bernard Lonergan in his definition of conversion strengthen this hope:
Conversion is a matter of moving from one set of roots to another. ...It occurs only inasmuch as a man [or woman] discovers what is inauthentic in himself and turns away from it, inasmuch as he discovers what the fulness of human authenticity can be and embraces it with his whole being. [26]
Epworth Review, 26(1999), 76-84.
[1] Newman, J.H., Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford. Rivingtons, London, 1887:201.
[2] The full quotation goes as follows: 'Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of people. The abolition of religion as illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness.' (Marx, K., 'Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right' in Marx and Engels, On Religion: 1957:42)
[3]The atheist approach was anticipated by powerful interpretations of Hegel's notion of religion in Feuerbach, which have influenced scholarship as well as popular thought up till now. In The Essence of Christianity Feurbach stated that in Hegel's view 'the object and contents of the Christian Religion are altogether human' (Harper & Row, London and New York, 1957:14), but he also radicalised the relationship between religion and atheism as follows: 'What yesterday was still religion is no longer such today; and what today is atheism, tomorrow will be religion' (32).
[4] The male religious orders completely, whilst in the female ones those who had already entered were allowed to stay, but no novices were permitted, and religious had to live under the control of the secret police, so that they would not influence other people with their beliefs.
[5] This position is more common among catholic fundamentalists, and affects in particular the field of theological education. Protestant fundamentalists are happy to transport their strong views from the West, where they have a longer tradition, cf. Barr, J., Fundamentalism. SCM, London, 1977.
[6] Cf. Hanuš, J., Dreaming in Full Awaking: Dialogues with Odilo Ivan Štampach. CDK, Brno, 1997; Konzal, J.,Confession of a Secret Bishop. Portál, Prague, 1998.
[7] ‘Right to History', a Document of Charter 77, in ‘Nazism and Catholic Church', Studie 103 (1986), 9.
[8] For persecution of Christians in Czechoslovakia in 1948-1989, see The Church Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1949-1951, Ústav pro soudobé d_jiny, Brno, 1994; Kaplan, K., The Church and the State in Czechoslovakia in 1948-1953. Dopln_k, Prague and Brno, 1993; Fiala, P., Hanuš, J., Koinótés: Felix M. Davídek and the Silent Church. CDK, Brno, 1994; Vaško, V., Not Silenced: The Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia after the World War II , Vol. I-II, Zvon, Prague, 1990; ‘The Ecclesiastical-political Development in Czechoslovakia (1938-1989)', in The Archbishopric of Prague in 1344-1994. Zvon, Prague, 1994; Kratochvíl, A., I Arraign, Vol. I-III.Dolmen, Prague , 1990; Prague Winter: Restrictions on Religious Freedom in Czechoslovakia Twenty Years After the Soviet Invasion, Puebla Institute, Washington D.C. , 1988.
[9] Cf. Poliakov, L., The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe. New American Library, New York, 1977.
[10] This had been enforced in every text book of history, from primary school to the university level, during the fourty years of communism.
[11] See Prague Winter, 12.
[12] See Vaško, Not Silenced: The Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia after the World War II; ‘The Ecclesiastical-political Development in Czechoslovakia (1938-1989)'.
[13] See Laws No. 217, 218 and 219/49 of the Collection October 14, 1949.
[14] See also Prague Winter: 58-60. Kaplan, K., ‘Church and State in Czechoslovakia from 1948 to 1956', in Religion in Communist Lands, Keston, Kent, Vol. 14, No.1, 59-72; Vol.14, No.2, 180-181, 1986.
[15] Cf. Vaško, Not Silenced: The Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia after the World War II ,II:1130-168,189-203; ‘The Ecclesiastical-political Development in Czechoslovakia (1938-1989)': 282-283.
[16] In Fiala, P. and Hanuš, J., Koinotés: Felix Maria Davídek and the Silent Church. Proglas, Brno, 1994: 64-65.
[17] Fiala and Hanuš, Koinotés: 63-89. Pousta, Z., Philosophy Behind Bars: Leopoldov in 1950s. Charles University, Prague 1995.
[18] Havel, V., The Power of the Powerless. ME Sharpe, Armonk, 1985:31.
[19] One of the key protagonists of the Christian Peace Conference, J.L. Hromádka was famous for public declarations of the kind that besides Incarnation the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russa was the greatest historical event. See Karásek, S., Your Nicest Wine. Dialogues ed. By Š. Hájek and M. Plzák, Kalich, Prague, 1998:62.
[20] Karásek, S., Your Nicest Wine: 62.
[21] Cf. The Church in the Underground. Getsemany Supplement 1995, Sí_, Prague.
[22] In the time of Charter 77 the "official" churches keeping the commands of the state participated in signing the document "Anti- Charter", which was brought to every conference of the priests and pastors.
[23] In Karásek, S., Your Nicest Wine: 98.
[24] The most significant document of this was a 31-point petition from December 1987.The petition was signed by over 500,000 Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, as well as non-believers. See Prague Winter: 55-57.
[25] James 2:16.
[26] Lonergan,B., Method in Theology, Darton, Longman and Todd, London, 1971:271.