Czechoslovak Hussite Church

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St. Nicholas Church on Old Town Square in Prague, the main Neo-Hussite church in the Czech capital

The Czechoslovak Hussite Church (Czech: Církev československá husitská , CČSH), until 1971 only the Czechoslovak Church ( Církev československá , CČS), is a Christian church that was formed in 1919/20 by splitting off from the Roman Catholic Church . The community of faith, often called the New Hussite Church , is mainly widespread in the Czech Republic , but there are also some parishes in Slovakia . It refers to the traditions of the Bohemian reformer Jan Hus . In 2011 it had around 39,000 believers.

Tomáš Butta has been the Patriarch of the New Hussite Church since 2006 .

history

Part of the Czech-speaking clergy in Bohemia and Moravia became increasingly dissatisfied with the appearance of the Catholic Church in Austria-Hungary at the end of the 19th century . Even the results of the First Vatican Council were reluctantly noted by many liberal Czech priests. These clerics also believed that the Catholic Church supported the existing political system of the Danube Monarchy and with it the supremacy of the Germans and Hungarians, while sympathizing with the politicians who called for changes in favor of the Czechs and the other Slavic peoples.

In 1890 liberal Czech and Slovak clergy founded the priestly association Jednota (unity), which advocated the modernization and democratization of the Catholic Church. Among other things, they demanded the introduction of the vernacular in mass , the abolition of compulsory celibacy and rapprochement with the Orthodox Churches . The episcopate and the Holy See tried to suppress this movement. Among the believers, the clergy organized in Jednota initially had relatively few followers. This changed in the course of the First World War , when the great majority of Czechs opposed the monarchy and prepared for the establishment of an independent state. One turned against the Habsburg-loyal Catholic episcopate.

The internal church conflict escalated after the proclamation of the independent Czechoslovak Republic . During the Christmas period of 1919, the Jednota priests began to read masses in the Czech language, and in January 1920 the radical wing of the modernist reform movement, called Ohnisko (Eng. Focal point), led the schism by Karel Farský and founded Czechoslovakia Church. Farský was later elected the first patriarch of the new church.

The new church was immediately recognized by the government of the republic, possibly also because it promised to consolidate the then politically desired Czechoslovak nation through the establishment of a national church. Several dozen church buildings were given to the religious community. The Holy See broke off diplomatic relations and called the nuncio back from Prague. While the Catholic Church was very distant from the First Republic because it rejected its secularism , the New Hussite Church unreservedly affirmed the political order of the Czech Republic and saw itself as the national church of the new state.

The New Hussite Church was mainly joined by Czech Christians, plus some Slovaks, while members of the German and Hungarian minorities were more reserved about the Czechoslovak national church. Most of the New Hussites had previously been Catholic, and there were only a few converts from the ranks of the small Protestant churches in the Bohemian countries and Slovakia. By 1930 the Czechoslovak Church had over 300,000 members, and the number of believers has decreased since then.

In 1947 women's ordination was permitted. In 1999 Jana Šilerová was ordained as the first female bishop. Under communist rule, the relationship between the Czechoslovak Church and the state was ambivalent. The New Hussites suffered less repression than the Catholics, whose clergy had taken a clear position against the communists. The New Hussite Church was instrumentalized by them as a religious fig leaf, while otherwise they pursued an extremely anti-church line. In the so-called phase of normalization after the Prague Spring , the Czechoslovak Church got its own theological faculty at Charles University in Prague . The communist rulers also reinterpreted the Hussite tradition in their own way and declared Jan Hus the first Czech revolutionary. The Church could do little to counter this in the public dominated by the Communist Party. In 1971 the church was renamed the Czechoslovak Hussite Church . Since then, the New Hussite Church has come closer to the Protestant churches. In 1994 she signed the Leuenberg Agreement .

Church organization

The Czechoslovak Hussite Church is an episcopal church with a strong say for the laity, who exercise them in the councils of elders of the parishes and in synods . In 2007 there were around 300 parishes, each headed by a council of elders elected by all believers. Around 270 priests work in the parishes, almost half of them women.

The church is divided into dioceses with headquarters in Prague, Pilsen, Königgrätz, Brno, Olomouc and Bratislava. These are headed by an elected diocesan council headed by the bishop. The universal church is led by a central council to which the diocesan assemblies send priests and lay people in equal proportions. The Church Synod makes the fundamental decisions with regard to dogmatic and organizational norms. She also elects the Patriarch, the spiritual head of the New Hussite Church. The Central Council takes care of the day-to-day business between the synods.

The church has a social service and a missionary work. These maintain some kindergartens, schools, old people's homes and homes for the disabled. The Central Council publishes the church newspaper Český zápas (Czech Struggle) . Candidates for the ministry are trained at the Hussite Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague, founded in 1950, in a five-year course and in church courses for preachers, deacons or pastors.

Teaching and worship

Patriarch Tomáš Butta during a service

In the beginning, after failed talks about a merger with the Serbian Orthodox Church or the Old Catholic Church as well as an initial demarcation from free religious tendencies under the theological influence of Farský , the New Hussite Church was strongly oriented towards a rationalistic and Unitarian Christian theology, which later approached Church, thus with the beliefs adopted in 1958 (which contain a Trinitarian creed based on the Nicano-Constantinopolitanum ) to the Christian mainstream.

Because of its theology and worship practice, the New Hussite Church has a lot in common with the Catholic Church from which it once emerged, but also with the Protestant churches. The source of their teachings are the Bible and the Christian tradition. So the Protestant principle of sola scriptura does not apply. Significant traditions are named: the time of the early Christian church with the seven ecumenical councils, the work of the Slav apostles Cyril and Method , the Reformation tradition, especially Jan Hus and the Utraquists who refer to his teachings . Like Catholics, Orthodox and Anglicans , the Czechoslovak Hussite Church recognizes seven sacraments . Like the Lutheran and Reformed churches , it emphasizes the freedom of conscience of the individual believer, it practices the ordination of women and emphasizes the equal participation of the laity in church leadership.

The celebration of the liturgy is at the center of worship practice. Two forms are used for this, which are very similar to the texts of the Catholic Mass; however, elements from Luther's German mass and from the utraquist tradition of the 15th and 16th centuries have also been incorporated.

The Neo-Hussite Church does not recognize saints , but images of saints in the church are not rejected. In the churches built after 1920, however, only a few portraits were attached, mainly depictions of Christ, and occasionally also pictures by Jan Hus.

The chalice plays a major role in church iconography . It is usually shown in red, as it was used in the 15th century as a standard on the flags of the Hussites . You can find it in the church interior, on priestly robes, the bindings of liturgical books, on church steeples and on church flags.

Patriarchs

Ecumenism

The New Hussite Church is a member of the World Council of Churches and the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe .

literature

New Hussite church in Olomouc with a chalice on the spire
  • Ulrich Daske: The Czechoslovak Hussite Church in German theological literature and in personal reports. Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-8204-0912-2 .
  • Rudolf Urban: The Czechoslovak Hussite Church (= Marburg East Research. 34). Marburg / Lahn 1973.
  • Církev československá husitská: Bohoslužebná kniha Církve československé husitské. Liturgy podle patriarchy Karla Farského. Druhá liturgie CČSH, Prague 2004.
  • David Tonzar: Vznik a vývoj novodobé husitské teologie a Církev československá husitská. Prague 2002, ISBN 80-246-0499-X .
  • Sigrid Tröger, Karl-Wolfgang Tröger (Ed.): Church Lexicon. Christian churches, free churches and communities at a glance. Union, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-372-00302-0 , pp. 227-228.

Web links

Commons : Czechoslovak Hussite Church  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Český statistický úřad - ČSÚ (Czech Statistical Office): Sčítání lidu, domů a bytů (results of the 2011 census) Tab. 604: Obyvatelstvo podle náboženské víry (population by religious community) (PDF; 251 kB), 6th column from left: Církev československá husitská, accessed on May 4, 2013.