Changes in Religious Values in the Czech Republic

Abstract

The article provides a brief sociological description of the religious development in the regions of Bohemia and Moravia over the past centuries and a more detailed analysis of the recent trends based on the data of the European Values Study from 1991 and 1999. The main conclusions for the present situation of the country are: (a) The secularisation continues, but not as quickly as 30 or 40 years ago; (b) Religious ideas of average citizens differ more and more from the traditional Christian dogmatic or atheistic ideology religious syncretism and Far East inspirations are widespread in the Czech Republic now; (c) The paradoxical character of current trends in the Czech Roman Catholic church is stressed threats to and the chances of the main Czech religious society have been dramatically altered since the revolution in 1989. Sociologický casopis/Czech Sociological Review, 2002, Vol. 38, No. 3: 345-363 The term 'religion' encompasses a rather complex set of opinions, attitudes, values, usages, rituals, organisations and political or economic interests. It is not possible to understand the role of religion in a society by concentrating on only one of its aspects or functions. The main objective of this article is to evaluate the short-term trends in religious development in the Czech Republic as presented in the data of the European Values Study (EVS) of 1991 and 1999 (the number of respondents in each year was 2110 and 1908 respectively). Taking the above points into account, I regard it necessary to complete these survey data with some brief information on the historical and social context. With this background the changes in religious practices and value orientations can be interpreted in a more fruitful and inspiring manner than would be possible merely on the basis of data drawn from a quantitative survey. Christianity, the traditional religion in the Czech Republic, has been declining since the 19th century. From a position of an almost monopolistic faith, broadly present throughout society, which at least formally it still occupied around^the year 1900, Christianity has reached a situation where more than one-half (according to the EVS study in 1999, maybe two-thirds) of the population in this country are no longer church members, and only about 5% of citizens participate regularly in church life. In addition, the centre of gravity of the population of believers lies among the older age groups, and it can be expected that the secularisation process will probably continue as the people in these age groups die. In addition to confirming and elaborating generally known facts, this article provides the following information on religiousness in the Czech Republic: A distinction is made between developments in particular churches ('popular' churches are differentiated from 'confessionary' ones the latter are more immune to the process of secularisation), and there are also important transformational processes within the * Direct all correspondence to: Jan Spousta, e-mail jspousta@scac.cz