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Both the Czechoslovak Hussite Church and Moravian Church trace their tradition back to the Hussite reformers and acknowledge Jan Hus (John Huss) as their predecessor.[4]
The forerunner of the CČSH was the Jednota (Union of the Catholic Clergy), which was founded in 1890 to promote modernist reforms in the Roman Catholic Church, such as use of the vernacular in the liturgy and the adoption of voluntary rather than compulsory clerical celibacy. The radical movement that resulted in the foundation of a new Church began in the Christmas season of 1919, when Christmas masses were celebrated in Czech in many Czechoslovak churches. The CCH was established on January 8, 1920, by Dr. Karel Farský, who became its first Patriarch and author of its liturgy. It was known until 1971 as the Czechoslovak Church. The head of the church continues to bear the title of Patriarch.
The church had a working-class membership and supported a socialist economic system in the years leading up to the 1948 Czechoslovak coup.[7]
According to 2021 censuses less than 25 000 people identified as adherents of the church, mostly in the Czech Republic and some in Slovakia. There are 304 congregations divided into five dioceses situated in Prague, Plzeň, Hradec Králové, Brno, and Olomouc in the Czech Republic and three congregations in the Bratislava Diocese in Slovakia. There are approximately 266 priests in active ministry, of whom 130 are women. Candidates of ministry are prepared at the Hussite Faculty of Theology at Charles University in Prague.[8]
The celebration of the liturgy is the center of worship practice. It used to be two forms, which have much in common with the texts of the Catholic Mass, but there are also elements of Luther's German Mass and the tradition of the Utraquist mass. Clergy wear a black robe with an embroidered red chalice and a white stole during the service.
There is no veneration of saints as practiced in the Apostolic Churches, but images of saints are employed in the church decoration. In the post-1920 period new churches were built, but only a few portraits were considered appropriate to place in them, particularly representations of Christ, and occasionally pictures of Jan Hus.
In the iconography of the church the chalice plays a major role, usually depicted in red, as it was used in the 15th century as a battle standard on the flags of the Hussites. It is found in the church, to the sacerdotal, the bindings of liturgical books, church steeples and church banners.[11]
Demography
After a split from the Catholic Church, amidst the post-war atmosphere of anti-Catholic agitation and euphoria about the Czech independence, the Czechoslovak Church's membership increased rapidly. In the 1921 Czechoslovak census, the first post-war census, 523,232 people claimed to be adherents of this church in what is today the Czech Republic. In 1930, the membership further grew to 779,672.[12] With 7.3% of total population, it became the prevailing religion in several regions of Bohemia and to a lesser degree in Moravia. At the beginning of Communist rule, the 1950 census recorded 946,497 adherents of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church. In the following decades there was no official census of religious affiliation in what is today the Czech Republic, although it is apparent that under Communist rule, membership started to collapse.
Relations between the church and other members of the ecumenical movement are cordial, but remained strained with the country's Roman Catholic leadership. The first woman to become a bishop of the Czechoslovak Hussite church, Jana Šilerová, was elected to a seven-year term of office in April 1999. In January 1999, Catholic Archbishop Miloslav Vlk made a public statement of disapproval, warning against election of a woman to this position and saying that it would cause deterioration of ecumenical relations.[13] Following criticism by the Czechoslovak Hussite Church for interfering in its affairs, the Roman Catholic Church distanced itself from the archbishop's remarks and stated that it would exert no pressure against her election.[14] In 2000, Catholic representatives attended the consecration of Jana Šilerová as the Hussite Church's first woman to become a bishop.[15]
^ abJones, Lindsay (2005). Encyclopedia of religion. Macmillan Reference. p. 4234. ISBN978-0-02-865739-4. The Czechoslovak Hussite Church (or Czechoslovak National Church), founded in 1920, continues the Hussite tradition.
^Melton, J. Gordon (2005). Encyclopedia of Protestantism. Infobase Publishing. p. 91. ISBN9780816069835. ...branches of the Lutheran Church most notable the Church of Sweden, preserve episcopal leadership and apostolic succesison. ... Among other Protestants that claim apostolic succession is the Moravian Church.
^Luxmoore, Jonathan (2001). "Eastern Europe 1997–2000: a Review of Church Life". Religion, State & Society. 29 (4): 305–330 [p. 327]. doi:10.1080/09637490120112465. S2CID143144427.
Bibliography
Abrams, Bradley F. (2004). "Socialism and Protestant Intellectuals: The "Kingdom of God on Earth"?". The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation: Czech Culture and the Rise of Communism. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN978-0-7425-3023-2.
Nĕmec, Ludvík (1975) The Czechoslovak Heresy and Schism: the emergence of a national Czechoslovak church American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, ISBN0-87169-651-7
Tonzar, David (2002) Vznik a vývoj novodobé husitské teologie a Církev československá husitska Karolinum, Prague, ISBN80-246-0499-X in Czech
Urban, Rudolf (1973) Die tschechoslowakische hussitische Kirche J.G. Herder-Institut, Marburg/Lahn, ISBN3-87969-103-7, in German
^Those are legal umbrella bodies which represent their member churches before the national government. They encompass multiple individual autonomous churches of differnet traditions which are themselves members of the CPCE.
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