체코의 종교와 종교문화

Religion and Religious Culture among Czechs - Focus on the Conflicts between Catholic and Protestant church -

The purpose of this paper is to analyze why atheist rate has been increasing among Czechs. Since the traditional religions do not answer the fundamental questions, and the relations between religions and societies have been changing, the developments of sciences and modernization, urbanization are in progress, the speed of secularization has been accelerating. In spite of these facts, the decline of religiosity and the degree of participation in church among Czechs do not mean the same results stemming from the same elements shared with the western societies. In this paper, I try to analyze the reasons which have affected the secularization among Czechs. What I call the securalization in this paper means the decline of religiosity, the decrease of the number of believers and the increase of the numbers of atheists. I classify them into three elements. First of all, I suppose the psychological elements among Czechs have been the most important and sustaining reasons to increase the number of atheists. In this dimension, the relations between official religion and national religion have affected the religious culture in Czech land since the defeat of White Mountain in 1620. The second element is the conflictual relations between catholic and protestant churches(especially Hussite). Among Czechs catholic church had been considered as the instruments keeping down the national identity in Czech land since the forcible reconversion to catholicism after the defeat of White Mountain. On the contrary protestant church had been taken for the nucleus of national desire for the independent of Czech. The third element is the gradual securalization since 1945. In this period, two kinds of revolution have affected the religious situations in Czech. After the communist coup on February 1948 almost all regions in Czech were brought upon and the believers were discriminated in all over the parts of society by communist regime. For these reasons believers had to turn their face away from the religions and churches. More recent events, after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, have connected with the modernization and westernization. In spite of all the reasons stated above, religious traditions are still alive in society. All the more the fact that they are mixed with the popular beliefs and even the pagan beliefs which have been remained among Czechs since the beginning of their history is the evidence that religious culture reflects the Czechs' way of life accumulated through their long history.