Once An Early Reformation Capital, Prague Now Home To Tiny Protestant Minority
This piece is published in cooperation with the European Journalism Institute held in Prague, an annual summer program co-sponsored by The Media Project.
PRAGUE — Czechia began its own Protestant Reformation over 100 years before Martin Luther posted his “Ninety-Five Theses.” The complete Bible was translated into the Czech language 100 years before the publication of the Gutenberg Bible.
As a result, thousands of Czechs died in the name of Protestantism during the Hussite Wars. But today, the nation has a Protestant population of less than 2%.
“This country’s lost,” said Jeff Rogers, a pastor who serves as pastor at Destiny Church in Prague.
Rogers was a pastor in the U.S. for over 20 years before moving to Prague in 2019 to work at a Christian school.
In a nation of 10.5 million people, census data show that only about 200,000 Czechs identify as Protestant, representing roughly two percent. But data can be scarce. The last time religion was a required question on the Czech census was 2001. In 2011 and 2021, any response to the “religion” section of the form was optional.
The 2001 data shows that the combined population of the two biggest Christian denominations was nearly cut in half from the data recorded in 1991. The numbers in the most recent census are imprecise, but they have continued to decline, each time almost halving themselves. For pastors, fighting these statistics with evangelism is not an easy task.
Rogers estimated that only 20% of his congregation are native Czechs. And while he is delighted to lead a cosmopolitan church in a diverse city, he said he feels burdened for the Czech people.
“I think there’s just a lack of trust with churches in general,” Rogers said, “because of the historical nature of this country of always having an empire basically force religion on them.”
This force started with fire. In 1415, the Catholic Church executed a local pastor named Jan Hus, whom they called “the archbishop of heretics.” He was burned alive for his crime of opposing papal authority and commitment to the idea that the Bible should be translated and preached in the language of the common people, not Latin.
As is so often the case with martyrs, Hus’ death only energized his pro-Protestant followers, who became known as the Hussites. Over the next four years, many were imprisoned. Eventually, while a priest was protesting their imprisonment, he was hit by stones thrown from the town hall in Prague. His response was to march his companions into the building and throw seven council members out the window, killing them all. This would come to be known as the famous “First Defenestration of Prague.”
After this, battles between the pro-Protestant Hussites and traditional Catholics began. What came to be known as the Hussite wars lasted 15 years. The Hussites usually held their ground, but were not a united group, and often fought each other in between battling Catholics.
The infighting mostly occurred between two major groups, the Taborites and the Utraquists. The Taborites were the radicals — believers in the supremacy of Scripture, simple worship, rejection of icons and the reception of both bread and wine for the eucharist. At the time, the Catholic Church only permitted clergy to drink communion wine. While the Utraquists supported a reception of the wine, they were far less concerned about the rest of the Taborite agenda.
Eventually, the Utraquists formed an alliance with the Catholics, which led to the defeat of the Taborites in 1434. By 1436, the Hussites got their wish: laypeople could receive both the bread and the wine. Today, the image of the cup is still an important symbol for Hussite churches.
In the next 500 years, Czechia went through phases of strong Protestantism followed by Catholic domination. All the while, some version of Christianity remained dominant.
Then came Communism and the Cold War. When the Soviet Union took over after World War II, they brought all their anti-religious sentiments with them, weakening an already scarce Christian presence.
But it wasn’t just the anti-religiosity that disempowered the church. It is possible that the failures of the Soviet Union itself contributed to an overall deficit in institutional trust. Writing about the decline of trust in post-Soviet nations, social scientist Plamena Pehlivanova said, “Trust toward government institutions and formal organisations has dramatically declined in accord with the decline in social and political participation.”
While Pehlivanova’s study focused on Bulgaria and Russia, Czechia's similar experience with the Soviets may have produced a similar distrust. In fact, a study done by The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development compared rates of institutional trust in different countries around the world. It found that Czechia scored significantly low. It said, “In 2023, 19% of Czech people reported high or moderately high trust in the national government, below the OECD average of 39%.”
Because of the bitter taste institutions have left in the mouths of many Czechs, Rogers said that building relationships has been much more effective in evangelism than dogmatism has. And it isn’t just knowing their names and exchanging greetings at church.
“Getting to know people, taking an interest in people,” Rogers said.
In fact, Rogers said pastors within the country have observed that, on average, it takes about eight years of conversations for a Czech person to go from spiritually uninterested to converting to Christianity.
While Rogers has friendships with pastors in the area, he said, “as a Christian leader, it’s lonely and isolating. You just don’t have much of a support group.”
There simply aren’t enough pastors to go around. But Rogers said he believes things might be changing.
Destiny Church has been around for a decade, but came under the leadership of Rogers and his wife, Carrie Beth Rogers, last February. About a year ago, it had about 80 regular attendees. But, defying expectations, when Rogers and his wife arrived, that number shot up to 180 in just a month.
The growing church is thoroughly multicultural, with congregants from not just Europe, but Africa, Asia and North America.
“If you come to our church on a Sunday morning, you will see a little bit of everything there,” he added.
The immense diversity, Rogers said, is so great that he speculates it is an example of “what heaven is like.”
While the ethnic make-up of his church is varied, the age range is less so, a fact which is exciting to Rogers. He said the average age of people who attend his services is about 29.
“The young Czech people are hungry to hear about God, to hear what he’s doing,” Rogers said. “I’m seeing him move in the younger generation.”
Rogers links this desire for faith to the isolation caused by the pandemic, where many found themselves desiring something more. He said that some people come who do not know anything about Jesus.
“They’re not surrounded by any other Christians,” he added, “it’s just sort of this prompting of the Holy Spirit.”
Matthew Peterson is Religion Unplugged’s podcast editor and audience development coordinator. He took part in this past summer’s European Journalism Institute held in Prague, an annual program co-sponsored by The Media Project.