In the Czech Republic, 47.8% of population is irreligious (atheist, agnostic or other irreligious life stances), while 21.3% of the population are believers. The religious identity of the country has changed drastically since the first half of the 20th century, when more than 90% of Czechs were Christians. [1] [2] As of 2021, 11.7% of the population identified with Christianity (9.3% identifying with Catholicism and 2.4% with all other Christian denominations); 10.8% identified with other religious identities or beliefs. [1] According to sociologist Jan Spousta, not all the irreligious people are atheists; indeed, since the late 20th century there has been an increasing distancing from both Christian dogmatism and atheism, and at the same time ideas and non-institutional models similar to those of Eastern religions have become widespread through movements started by various gurus , and hermetic and mystical paths. [3]
The Christianisation of the Czechs (Bohemians, Moravians and Silesians) occurred in the 9th and 10th centuries, when they were incorporated into the Catholic Church and abandoned indigenous Slavic paganism. After the Bohemian Reformation which began in the late 14th century, most Czechs became Hussites, that is to say followers of Jan Hus, Petr Chelčický and other regional Proto-Protestant religious reformers. Taborites and Utraquists were the two major Hussite factions. During the Hussite Wars in the early 15th century, the Utraquists sided with the Catholic Church, and following the joint Utraquist—Catholic victory, Utraquism was accepted by the Catholic Church as a legitimate doctrine to be practised in the Kingdom of Bohemia, while all the other Hussite movements were prohibited. Jewish minorities were also present in the country. [4]
After the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, some in Bohemia, especially Sudeten Germans, went with the teachings of Martin Luther (Lutheranism). In the wake of the Reformation, Utraquist Hussites took a renewed increasingly anti-Catholic stance while some of the defeated Hussite factions (notably the Taborites) were revived. The defeat of Bohemians estates by the Habsburg monarchy in the Battle of White Mountain in 1620 affected the religious sentiments of the Czechs, as the Habsburgs endorsed a Counter-Reformation to forcibly reconvert all Czechs, even Utraquist Hussites, back to the Catholic Church. [4]
Since the Battle of White Mountain, widespread anti-Catholic sentiment and resistance to the Catholic Church underlay the history of the Czech lands even when the whole population nominally belonged to the Catholic Church, and the Czechs have been historically characterised as "tolerant and even indifferent towards religion". [5] At the end of the 18th century, Protestant and Jewish minorities were once again granted some rights, but they had to wait another century to have full equality. [4] In 1918 the Habsburg monarchy collapsed, and in the newly independent Czechoslovakia, in 1920, the Catholic Church suffered a schism as the Czechoslovak Hussite Church re-established itself as an independent organism. [4] In 1939–1945, Nazism annihilated or expelled most of the Jewish population. [6] The Catholic Church lost about half of its adherents during the Marxist-Leninist period of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (1960–1990), and has continued to decline in the contemporary epoch after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 restored liberal democracy in Czechoslovakia. [7] Protestantism did not recover immediately after the Habsburg Counter-Reformation; it regained some ground when the Habsburg monarchy disintegrated in the early 20th century (in 1950 about 17% of the Czechs were Protestants, mostly Hussites), although after the 1950s it declined again and today it is a very small minority (around 1%). [1]
According to the official censuses conducted by the Czech Statistical Office, Catholicism was the religion of 39.1% of the Czechs in 1991 and has declined to 9.3% in 2021; Protestantism and other types of Christianity declined in the same period from around 5% to around 2%; at the same time, adherents of other religions or believers without an identifiable religion grew from 0.3% to 10.8%. [1] Small minority religions in the Czech Republic include Buddhism, Islam, Paganism, Hinduism, Judaism, and others. [1] In the census of 2021, 47.8% of the Czechs declared that they did not believe in any religion, while 30.1% did not respond. [1]
Religion | 1921 | 1930 | 1950 | 1991 | 2001 | 2011 | 2021 | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | |
Christianity | 9,150,872 | 91.5 | 9,691,392 | 90.8 | 8,332,458 | 93.7 | 4,518,512 | 43.9 | 3,094,227 | 30.2 | 1,379,802 | 13.2 | 1,241,214 | 11.7 |
—Catholicism | 8,210,771 | 82.1 | 8,390,228 | 78.6 | 6,824,908 | 76.7 | 4,028,415 | 39.1 | 2,748,455 | 26.9 | 1,092,346 | 10.5 | 985,318 | 9.3 |
——Roman Catholic Church | 8,201,464 | 82.0 | 8,378,079 | 78.5 | 6,792,046 | 76.3 | 4,021,385 | 39.0 | 2,740,780 | 26.8 | 1,082,463 | 10.4 | 741,175 | 7.0 |
——Catholics without church | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 235,834 | 2.2 |
——Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church | 9,307 | 0.1 | 12,149 | 0.1 | 32,862 | 0.4 | 7,030 | 0.1 | 7,675 | 0.1 | 9,883 | 0.1 | 8,309 | 0.1 |
—Eastern Orthodox Church (majority Czech and Slovak) | 9,221 | 0.1 | 24,488 | 0.2 | 50,365 | 0.6 | 19,354 | 0.2 | 22,968 | 0.2 | 26,370 | 0.2 | 41,178 | 0.4 |
—Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren | 231,199 | 2.3 | 290,994 | 2.7 | 401,729 | 4.5 | 203,996 | 2.0 | 117,212 | 1.1 | 51,858 | 0.5 | 32,577 | 0.3 |
—Czechoslovak Hussite Church | 523,232 | 5.2 | 779,672 | 7.3 | 946,813 | 10.6 | 178,036 | 1.7 | 99,103 | 1.0 | 39,229 | 0.4 | 23,610 | 0.2 |
—Jehovah's Witnesses | – | – | – | – | – | – | 14,575 | 0.1 | 23,162 | 0.2 | 13,069 | 0.1 | 13,298 | 0.1 |
—Augsburg Confession Lutheran churches (majority Silesian) | 150,687 | 1.5 | 52,485 | 0.5 | 80,144 | 0.9 | 37,281 | 0.4 | 34,317 | 0.3 | 17,379 | 0.2 | 11,047 | 0.1 |
—German Evangelical Church in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia | – | – | 130,981 | 1.2 | 6,401 | 0.1 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
—Old Catholic Church of the Czech Republic | 20,103 | 0.2 | 22,544 | 0.2 | – | – | 2,725 | 0.03 | 1,605 | 0.02 | 1,730 | 0.02 | 672 | 0.01 |
—Other Christians [α] | 14,966 | 0.1 | 31,033 | 0.3 | 22,098 | 0.2 | 34,130 | 0.3 | 47,405 | 0.5 | 137,821 | 1.3 | 133,514 | 1.3 |
Jediism | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 15,070 | 0.1 | 21,539 | 0.2 |
Buddhism | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 6,817 | 0.07 | 6,101 | 0.06 | 5,757 | 0.05 |
Islam | – | – | – | – | – | – | 495 | 0.0 | 3,699 | 0.04 | 3,358 | 0.03 | 5,244 | 0.05 |
Paganism | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 863 | 0.01 | 2,953 | 0.03 |
Pastafarianism | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 2,696 | 0.03 |
Hinduism | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 1,061 | 0.01 | 2,408 | 0.02 | 2,024 | 0.02 |
Judaism | 125,083 | 1.3 | 117,551 | 1.1 | 8,038 | 0.1 | 1,292 | 0.01 | 1,515 | 0.01 | 1,474 | 0.01 | 1,901 | 0.02 |
Biotronics | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 1,053 | 0.01 |
Other religion | 2,393 | 0.02 | 266 | 0.002 | 12,786 | 0.1 | 35,651 | 0.3 | 180,769 | 1.8 | 628 | 0.01 | 89,254 | 0.8 |
Believers without religion | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 760,316 | 7.3 | 1,005,788 | 9.6 |
No religion | 716,515 | 7.2 | 834,144 | 7.8 | 519,962 | 5.8 | 4,112,864 | 39.9 | 6,039,991 | 59.0 | 3,604,095 | 34.5 | 5,027,794 | 47.8 |
Not stated | 10,871 | 0.1 | 31,033 | 0.3 | 22,889 | 0.3 | 1,665,617 | 16.2 | 901,981 | 8.8 | 4,662,455 | 44.7 | 3,162,540 | 30.1 |
Total population | 10,005,734 | 10,674,386 | 8,896,133 | 10,302,215 | 10,230,060 | 10,436,560 | 10,524,167 |
Census statistics 1921–2021: [1]
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The Czechs gradually converted to Christianity from Slavic paganism between the 9th and the 10th century, and Christianity—especially the Catholic Church, with significant minorities of Protestantism, and even majorities in some periods, from the 15th century onwards [4] —remained the religion of nearly all the population until the end of the 19th century. [8] Bořivoj I, Duke of Bohemia, baptised by the Saints Cyril and Methodius, was the first ruler of Bohemia to adopt Christianity as the state religion. Since the late 19th century, and especially throughout the 20th century, Christianity was gradually abandoned by the majority of the Czechs and today it remains the religion of a minority. [8] From 1950 to 2021, the official censuses of the Czech Statistical Office recorded a decline of professed Christianity from about 94% to about 12% of the population of the Czech lands. [1]
The Marxist-Leninist period of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (1960–1990) certainly saw an oppression of Christianity, thus contributing to its decline, but also hampered the appearance of any alternatives in the area of religion, so that Christianity continued to have a monopolistic position in the religious interpretation of the world. [9] Only the restoration of liberal democracy after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 opened the country to the spread of non-Christian religions. [9] According to the scholar Jan Spousta, throughout the 20th century Christianity gradually lost its character as the Czechs' traditional religion, and was abandoned by most while turning into a religion of sincere choice for the minority who continues to identify itself with it and practise it. [10] Spousta also found that Christians in the early 21st century tended to be older and less educated than the general population, and females were far more likely than males to be believers. [8] Christianity remained relatively higher in percentage among the populations of the agrarian south-eastern regions of Moravia, while the percentages were already very low in the large cities and the north-western more industrialised regions of Bohemia. [11]
Roman Catholicism was the main tradition of Christianity historically practised by the Czechs after they converted from Slavic paganism, and although in the 15th and 16th century many Czechs—in many areas and periods most—joined Proto-Protestant and Protestant churches, the Habsburg monarchy which gained imperial power on the Czech lands in the early 17th century enacted a Counter-Reformation movement which reconverted most Czechs to the Catholic Church. [4] By the time of the collapse of the Habsburg power and the establishment of independent Czechoslovakia in 1918, the position of the Catholic Church had already been weakened by criticism from the intellectual class and by the social changes brought by the rapid industrialisation of especially the northern and western pars of the country, Bohemia. [4] At the same time, the association of Catholicism with the unpopular erstwhile Habsburg power led to widespread anticlericalism and anti-Catholicism, and to a revival of the native historical form of Czech Protestantism, namely Hussitism; in 1920, Hussites split out of the Catholic Church with about 10% of the formerly Catholic clergy and established themselves as the Czechoslovak Hussite Church. [4]
From 1950 onwards, Marxist-Leninists gained power in Czechoslovakia, which from 1960 to 1989 became the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, and while they fought all religions, Catholicism was targeted with particular aggressiveness. [6] After the Velvet Revolution in 1989 and the restoration of liberal democracy in the Czech lands, Catholicism, like other forms of Christianity, did not recover and continued to lose adherents. [6] The data from the national censuses show that Catholics decreased from 76.7% of the Czechs in 1950 prior to the Marxist-Leninist period, to 39.1% in 1991 after the fall of Marxism-Leninism, to 26.9% in 2001, to 10.5% in 2011, and to 9.3% in 2021. [1]
In the late 14th century, the religious and social reformer Jan Hus started a Proto-Protestant movement which would have been later called "Hussitism" after him. Although Jan Hus was declared heretic by the Catholic Church and burnt at the stake in Constance in 1415, his followers seceded from the Catholic Church and in the Hussite Wars (1419–1434) they defeated five crusades organised against them by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund. Petr Chelčický continued in the wake of the Bohemian Hussite Reformation and gave rise to the Hussite Moravian Church. During the 15th and 16th century, most of Czechs were adherents of Hussitism, and at the same time many Sudeten Germans of the Czech lands joined the Protestant Reformation of Martin Luther and his doctrine (Lutheranism). [4]
After 1526, Bohemia came increasingly under the control of the Habsburg monarchy, as the Habsburgs became first the elected and later the hereditary rulers of Bohemia. The Defenestration of Prague and the subsequent revolt against the Habsburgs in 1618 marked the start of the Thirty Years' War, which quickly spread throughout Central Europe. In 1620, the rebellion in Bohemia was crushed at the Battle of White Mountain, and the ties between Bohemia and the Habsburgs' hereditary lands in Austria were strengthened. The war had a devastating effect on the local population, and the people were forced to convert back to Catholicism under the Habsburgs' Counter-Reformation efforts. [4]
In 1918, when the Habsburg monarchy disintegrated and independent Czechoslovakia emerged, most of the Czechs professed formal affiliation to Catholicism; anti-Catholic sentiments spread quickly as Catholicism was viewed as the religion re-imposed by the Habsburg, so that in 1920 the Czechoslovak Hussite Church split off the Catholic Church and was joined by about 10% of the former Catholic clergy, [4] and 10.6% of the Czechs had become again Hussites by 1950. [1] The Czechoslovak Church was supported by the government of the first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Masaryk (1850–1937). [4] In the same years, the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren (a doctrinally mixed church of Lutheran, Calvinist and Hussite traditions) represented another 4.5% of the population, and another 1% were members of Lutheran churches of the Augsburg Confession (mostly of the Silesian Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession). [1]
During the Marxist-Leninist years of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic all religions were discouraged by the government; the Czech Protestant churches lost many members (the Czechoslovak Church lost 80% of its adherents), and they continued to decline after the restoration of liberal democracy after 1989. [6] Protestantism today constitutes a small minority of around 1% of the population; according to the 2021 census, only 0.2% of the Czechs (23,610) adhered to the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, 0.3% (32,577) adhered to the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, and 0.1% (11,047) were Lutherans of the Augsburg Confession (still mostly Silesian). [1] The Moravian Church, historically tied to the region of Moravia, was still present with a very small number of adherents, about 1,257. [1] Other Protestant minorities include Anglicans, Adventists, Apostolic Pentecostals, Baptists, Brethren, Methodists, and nondenominational Evangelicals. [1]
In the 2021 census, 41,178 Czechs (0.4% of the population) identified themselves as adherents of the Eastern Orthodox Church, almost all of them members of the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia and only a few hundreds of the Czech branch of the Russian Orthodox Church. [1] In the same census, 13,298 (0.1%) identified themselves as Jehovah's Witnesses, and very small minorities as Mormons of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, adherents of the Unification Church, and of other minor Christian churches. [1] 71,089 Czechs (0.7%) identified themselves simply as "Christians". [1]
In the 2021 census, 5,257 Czechs declared themselves adherents of Buddhism. [1] Many of the Vietnamese Czechs, which constitute the largest immigrant ethnic group in the Czech Republic, are adherents of Mahayana traditions of Vietnamese Buddhism. Ethnic Czech Buddhists are otherwise mostly followers of Vajrayana traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, Mahayana traditions of Korean Buddhism, and Theravada traditions. There are various Tibetan Buddhist, Korean Buddhist and Theravada Buddhist centres in the country; many of those of the Tibetan tradition are afferent to the Diamond Way founded by the Danish lama Ole Nydahl. [12]
The entire Pagan community in the Czech Republic, including Slavic Rodnovery (Czech : Rodnověří) as well as other Pagan religions, was described by scholars of religion as small in 2013. [14] In the 2021 census, 2,953 Czechs identified themselves as Pagans (including 189 Druids). [1] The first Pagan groups to emerge in the Czech Republic in the 1990s were oriented towards Germanic Heathenry and Celtic Druidry, [15] while modern Slavic Rodnovery began to develop around 1995–1996 with the foundation of two groups, the National Front of the Castists and Radhoŝť, which in 2000 were merged to form the Community of Native Faith (Společenství Rodná Víra). [16] There are also adherents of the Rodnover denomination of Ynglism; the Civic Association Tartaria (Občanské sdružení Tartaria), headquartered in Slovakia, also caters to Czech Ynglists. [17] Besides Slavic Rodnovers, Germanic Heathens and Celtic Druids, in the Czech Republic there are also Wiccan followers, [18] and one Kemetic organisation, Per Kemet. [19]
The Community of Native Faith was among the government-recognised religious entities until 2010, when it was unregistered and became an informal association due to ideological disagreements between the Castists and other subgroups about whether Slavic religion was Indo-European hierarchic worship (supported by the Castists), Neolithic mother goddess worship, or neither. [20] The leader of the organisation since 2007 has been Richard Bigl (Khotebud), and it is today devoted to the celebration of annual holidays and individual rites of passage, to the restoration of sacred sites associated with Slavic deities, and to the dissemination of knowledge about Slavic spirituality in Czech society. [21] While the contemporary association is completely adogmatic and apolitical, [22] and refuses to "introduce a solid religious or organisational order" because of the past internal conflicts, [23] between 2000 and 2010 it had a complex structure, [22] and redacted a Code of Native Faith defining a precise doctrine for Czech Rodnovery (which firmly rejected the Book of Veles ). [24] Though Rodná Víra no longer maintains structured territorial groups, it is supported by individual adherents scattered throughout the Czech Republic. [25]
The deep changes in the religious sensibility of the Czechs since the early 20th century, and the loss of religious monopoly and decline of Christianity, opened a space for the growth of new forms of religiousness, [9] including ideas and non-institutional, diffuse models similar to those of Eastern religions, [26] with the spread of movements centred around various gurus , and hermetic and mystical paths. [11]
In the 2021 census, 21,539 Czechs (0.2% of the population) identified themselves as adherents of Jediism (a real philosophy based on that of the fictional Jedi of the Star Wars space opera [27] ), 5,244 as Muslims, 2,696 as Pastafarians (an antitheist parody of religion), 2,024 as Hindus, 1,901 as Jews, 1,053 as adherents of Biotronics (incorporated as the Society of Josef Zezulka [28] ), and 89,254 (0.8% of the population) as adherents of other minority religions. [1] Another 9.6% of the Czechs declared themselves as having some belief but not identifiable with any specific religion. [1]
In the 2021 census, 5,027,794 Czechs, corresponding to 47.8% of the total population of the Czech Republic, identified themselves as irreligious, including atheism, agnosticism and other irreligious life stances. [1] Some Czech atheists have organised themselves in the Civic Association of Atheists (Občanské sdružení ateistů), which is a member of the Atheist Alliance International. [29] Not all irreligious Czechs are atheists; a number of non-religious people believe or practise unorganised forms of spirituality which do not require strict adherence or identification, similar to Eastern religions. [26]
Media related to Religion in the Czech Republic at Wikimedia Commons
Bohemia is the westernmost and largest historical region of the Czech Republic. Bohemia can also refer to a wider area consisting of the historical Lands of the Bohemian Crown ruled by the Bohemian kings, including Moravia and Czech Silesia, in which case the smaller region is referred to as Bohemia proper as a means of distinction.
The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The Czech Republic has a hilly landscape that covers an area of 78,871 square kilometers (30,452 sq mi) with a mostly temperate continental and oceanic climate. The capital and largest city is Prague; other major cities and urban areas include Brno, Ostrava, Plzeň and Liberec.
The Hussites were a Czech proto-Protestant Christian movement that followed the teachings of reformer Jan Hus, a part of the Bohemian Reformation.
Jan Hus, sometimes anglicized as John Hus or John Huss, and referred to in historical texts as Iohannes Hus or Johannes Huss, was a Czech theologian and philosopher who became a Church reformer and the inspiration of Hussitism, a key predecessor to Protestantism, and a seminal figure in the Bohemian Reformation. Hus is considered to be the first Church reformer, even though some designate the theorist John Wycliffe. His teachings had a strong influence, most immediately in the approval of a reformed Bohemian religious denomination and, over a century later, on Martin Luther.
The history of the Czech lands – an area roughly corresponding to the present-day Czech Republic – starts approximately 800 years BCE. A simple chopper from that age was discovered at the Red Hill archeological site in Brno. Many different primitive cultures left their traces throughout the Stone Age, which lasted approximately until 2000 BCE. The most widely known culture present in the Czech lands during the pre-historical era is the Únětice Culture, leaving traces for about five centuries from the end of the Stone Age to the start of the Bronze Age. Celts – who came during the 5th century BCE – are the first people known by name. One of the Celtic tribes were the Boii (plural), who gave the Czech lands their first name Boiohaemum – Latin for the Land of Boii. Before the beginning of the Common Era the Celts were mostly pushed out by Germanic tribes. The most notable of those tribes were the Marcomanni and traces of their wars with the Roman Empire were left in south Moravia.
The Czechs, or the Czech people, are a West Slavic ethnic group and a nation native to the Czech Republic in Central Europe, who share a common ancestry, culture, history, and the Czech language.
The Hussite Wars, also called the Bohemian Wars or the Hussite Revolution, were a series of civil wars fought between the Hussites and the combined Catholic forces of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, the Papacy, and European monarchs loyal to the Catholic Church, as well as various Hussite factions. At a late stage of the conflict, the Utraquists changed sides in 1432 to fight alongside Roman Catholics and opposed the Taborites and other Hussite spin-offs. These wars lasted from 1419 to approximately 1434.
Although the Kingdom of Bohemia, both of the Lusatias, the Margraviate of Moravia, and Silesia were all under Habsburg rule, they followed different paths of development. Moravians and Silesians had accepted the hereditary right of the Austrian Habsburgs to rule and thus escaped the intense struggle between native estates and the Habsburg monarchy that was to characterize Bohemian history. In contrast, the Bohemian Kingdom had entrenched estates that were ready to defend what they considered their rights and liberties. The Habsburgs pursued a policy of centralization and conflict arose, which was further complicated by ethnic and religious issues.
The Moravian Church, or the Moravian Brethren, formally the Unitas Fratrum, is one of the oldest Protestant denominations in Christianity, dating back to the Bohemian Reformation of the 15th century and the Unity of the Brethren founded in the Kingdom of Bohemia, sixty years before Martin Luther's Reformation.
The Kingdom of Bohemia, sometimes referenced in English literature as the Czech Kingdom, was a medieval and early modern monarchy in Central Europe. It was the predecessor state of the modern Czech Republic.
Protestantism originated from the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. The term Protestant comes from the Protestation at Speyer in 1529, where the nobility protested against enforcement of the Edict of Worms which subjected advocates of Lutheranism to forfeit all of their property. However, the theological underpinnings go back much further, as Protestant theologians of the time cited both Church Fathers and the Apostles to justify their choices and formulations. The earliest origin of Protestantism is controversial; with some Protestants today claiming origin back to people in the early church deemed heretical such as Jovinian and Vigilantius.
The Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren (ECCB) (Czech: Českobratrská církev evangelická; ČCE) is the largest Czech Protestant church and the second-largest church in the Czech Republic after the Catholic Church. It was formed in 1918 in Czechoslovakia through the unification of the Protestant churches of the Lutheran and Calvinist confessions.
The Czechoslovak Hussite Church is a Christian church that separated from the Catholic Church after World War I in former Czechoslovakia.
The Catholic Church in the Czech Republic is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope, curia in Rome, and the Conference of Czech Bishops.
The history of Moravia, one of the Czech lands, is diverse and characterized by many periods of foreign governance.
This article covers the period from the origin of the Moravian Church, as well as the related Hussite Church and Unity of the Brethren, in the early fourteenth century to the beginning of mission work in 1732. Further expanding the article, attention will also be paid to the early Moravian settlement at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, following their first arrival in Nazareth, Pennsylvania in 1740.
Religion in Slovakia is predominantly Christianity, adhered to by about 68.8% of the population in 2021.
The Bohemian Reformation, preceding the Reformation of the 16th century, was a Christian movement in the late medieval and early modern Kingdom and Crown of Bohemia striving for a reform of the Catholic Church. Lasting for more than 200 years, it had a significant impact on the historical development of Central Europe and is considered one of the most important religious, social, intellectual and political movements of the early modern period. The Bohemian Reformation produced the first national church separate from Roman authority in the history of Western Christianity, the first apocalyptic religious movement of the early modern period, and the first pacifist Protestant church.
The Estates Revolt was the first anti-Habsburg uprising of the Czech estates, which took place in Prague in January–July 1547, and the third uprising of the estates in the Habsburg Empire after the Revolt of the Comuneros in Spain (1520–1522) and the Revolt of Ghent in Flanders (1539–1540). The uprising was triggered by the absolutist policies of King Ferdinand I of Habsburg, aimed at reducing the political influence of the privileged estates and the recatolization of the lands of the Bohemian Crown.
The Unity of the Brethren is the ecclesiastical province of the Moravian Church in the Czech Republic. Due to a schism in the province in 2000, eight of its original congregations comprise the so-called Herrnhut Seniorate of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren.