No source, born digital.
Contributions to Contemporary History is one of the central Slovenian scientific historiographic journals, dedicated to publishing articles from the field of contemporary history (the 19th and 20th century).
The journal is published three times per year in Slovenian and in the following foreign languages: English, German, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Italian, Slovak and Czech. The articles are all published with abstracts in English and Slovenian as well as summaries in English.
Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino je ena osrednjih slovenskih znanstvenih zgodovinopisnih revij, ki objavlja teme s področja novejše zgodovine (19. in 20. stoletje).
Revija izide trikrat letno v slovenskem jeziku in v naslednjih tujih jezikih: angleščina, nemščina, srbščina, hrvaščina, bosanščina, italijanščina, slovaščina in češčina. Članki izhajajo z izvlečki v angleščini in slovenščini ter povzetki v angleščini.
Oktobra 1918 je z razglasitvijo nove Češkoslovaške republike
prišlo do revolucionarnih sprememb ne le na političnem, družbenem,
gospodarskem in kulturnem področju, temveč tudi v verskem življenju v
državi. Nova Češkoslovaška nacionalna cerkev, ki so jo ustanovili trinajst
mesecev pozneje, je združevala narodno usmeritev, reformirano cerkveno
gibanje, teološki modernizem, husitsko in reformacijsko tradicijo ter
nasprotovanje Katoliški cerkvi, katere ugled je bil dokončno omajan v prvi
svetovni vojni. Novoustanovljeno Češkoslovaško cerkev so podpirali različni
organi, poleg tega pa je veljala kot ustrezna izbira za dobrega
češkoslovaškega državljana, predvsem delavca. Obenem je sprožila udi nasilno
gibanje za spreobrnitev (1921, 1930) in številne lokalne konflikte (v 20.
letih prejšnjega stoletja). Članek se osredotoča na versko in narodno
opredelitev delavcev ter na spremembe v današnji Ostravski regiji –
industrijski regiji (središču češkoslovaške težke industrije), ki se
razprostira po etnični meji in je talilni lonec številnih narodov (Čehov,
Slovakov, Poljakov, Nemcev in Judov). V njem bomo analizirali interakcije
med družbenimi razredi ter versko in narodno opredelitvijo delavcev.
Poskušali bomo pojasniti proces spreobrnitve ter motivacijo zanjo v
različnih cerkvah. Posebno pozornost bomo posvetili spreobrnitvam med
pripadniki delavskega razreda v 20. in 30. letih prejšnjega stoletja.
Analiza bo temeljila na protokolih spreobrnitve, dokumentih o popisih
prebivalstva iz leta 1921 in leta 1930 ter na cerkvenih listinah
Rimskokatoliške in Češkoslovaške cerkve.
Ključne besede: Delavci, Češkoslovaška cerkev, gibanje za
spreobrnitev, Ostravska regija, 1918–1938
The declaration of the new Czechoslovak national state in
October 1918 brought revolutionary changes not only to the political,
social, economic and cultural scene, but also to the religious life of the
country. The new Czechoslovak national church created thirteen months later
combined national orientation, the reformed clerical movement, theological
modernism, the Hussite and reformation tradition and protest against the
Catholic Church, definitively discredited in World War I. The newly
established Czechoslovak Church received support from various authorities
and was seen as the proper option for the good Czechoslovak citizen,
primarily the worker. At the same time, it produced a violent conversion
movement (1921, 1930) and many local conflicts (1920s). The paper will focus
on the workers’ religious and national identification and changes in today’s
Ostrava region – an industrial region (the centre of Czechoslovak heavy
industry) situated on the ethnic borderline and in the melting pot of many
nationalities (Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Germans and Jews). It will analyse
the interactions between class and the religious and national identification
of workers. It will try to clarify the process and the motivation to convert
between different churches. Special attention will be given to conversions
among the working class population in the 1920s and 1930s. This analysis
will be based on conversion protocols, census documents from 1921 and 1930
and ecclesiastical files of the Roman Catholic and Czechoslovak
church.
Keywords: Workers, Czechoslovak Church, Conversion Movement,
Region of Ostrava, 1918–1938
The process of constituting the Czechoslovak Republic at the end of October 1918
was to be, in the minds of its founders headed by the future President Tomáš
Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937, in office 1918–1935), an act of national revolution.Moderní člověk a náboženství
[Modern Man and Religion], 1896) and the social issue (Otázka sociální [The Social Issue], 1898) were
already the most prominent contemporary tasks that needed to be addressed
outside the confessional bounds of the traditional churches, as both
Catholicism and Protestantism were, in his opinion, beyond reform, not to
mention the Russian orthodoxy. For Masaryk, as the supporter of Palacký’s
concept of Czech history with its heyday during the time of the Czech
Reformation in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Czech issue (Česká otázka [The Czech Issue], 1895) was then primarily a
religious concern, which failed to be resolved due to the reformatory
inconsistence of the Czech Protestant churches and the Catholic
anti-modernism.social revolution, emphasising the demands of land
reform and the socialisation of large industrial enterprises. While the social
revolution broke down as a half-hearted land reform to the detriment of great
church and noble landowners (1923–1926), and large enterprises were eventually
socialised in a completely different political setting as late as in October
1945, the national revolution gave birth to a multi-national and
multi-confessional Czechoslovak State. It was dominated by the Czechoslovak
nationth century. It was not until World War One, however, that it
became the ideology of the emerging Czechoslovak state, calling upon the
assertions of the national revivalists František Palacký (1798–1876) and Ján
Kollár (1793–1852) concerning the historical unity between the Czech and
Slovak nation. With the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic,
Czechoslovakism became the state doctrine incorporated into the Constitution
(1920), which accelerated the emancipation of the Slovak nation but hindered
its full national and political self-realisation. The key critic of
Czechoslovakism in the interwar period was the Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia. Even today, several tens of thousands of Czech exiles all
over the world claim allegiance to the Czechoslovak nation and language. For
details, see e.g. Jan Galandauer, “Čechoslovakismus v proměnách času: od
národotvorné tendence k integrační ideologii,” [Czechoslovakism and Its
Changes in the Course of Time: From a Nation-creating Trend to the Ideology
of Integration] Historie a
vojenství: časopis Historického ústavu Armády České
republiky 47, No. 2 (1998): 33–52.Československá vlastivěda. Řada II: Národopis
[Czechoslovak History and Geography. Series II: Ethnography]
(Praha: Sfinx, Bohumil Janda, 1936), 99: In 1930 Czechoslovakia had a
population of 14 479 565, 9 668 770 of whom declared themselves Czechoslovak
nationals (66.8 %), 3 231 688 German nationals (22.3 %), 691 923 Hungarian
nationals (4.8 %), 549 169 Russian and Ruthenian nationals (3.8 %), 186 642
Jewish nationals (1.3 %), 81 737 Polish nationals (0.6 %) and 49 636 (0.3 %)
other nationalities. The most popular was the Roman Catholic Church (74.8 %
of the Czechoslovak population); Evangelic (Protestant) churches comprised
10 %, the Czechoslovak Church 5.1 %, the Greek Catholic Church 3.9 %, the
Russian Orthodox Church 0.6 % and the Israelites 1.1 % of the population.
4.5 % of the Czechoslovak population followed no religion or belonged to
marginal religious communities.religious
revolution under the slogans of the modernisation and democratisation
of Czech Catholicism, its departure from Rome and Vienna and the accomplishment
of the Czech reformation and anti-clerical tradition represented by Jan Hus
(1369–1415), Petr Chelčický (1390–1460), Jan Amos Komenský (1592–1670), Karel
Havlíček-Borovský (1821–1856) and Masaryk. This fact was omitted in Czech
historiography until it was brought to light again by foreign researchers led by
Martin Schulz Wessel (2011).Revolution und religiöser Dissens: Der
römisch-katholische und der russisch-ortodoxe Klerus als Träger
religiösen Wandels in den böhmischen Ländern und in Russland 1848–1922
[Revolution and Religious Dissent: The Roman Catholic Church and Russian
Orthodox Clerics as Bearers of Religious Change in the Czech Lands and
Russia 1848–1922] (München: Oldenbourg, 2011), 1–26.Život a dílo prof. Františka Kováře: příběh patriarchy a
učence [The Life and Work of Prof. František Kovář: The Story of a
Patriarch and Scholar] (Brno: L. Marek, 2007). Oskar Malý, Můj životopis: vzpomínky spoluzakladatele Církve
československé (husitské) [The Story of My Life: Memories of a
Co-Founder of the Czechoslovak (Hussite) Church] (Brno: Brněnská
diecéze Církve československé husitské, 2009), etc.
Besides the independent Czechoslovak State and the failing socialisation, the
revolutionary events and ethos of October 1918 gave rise to another
revolutionary project – the national Czechoslovak Church.
It was established, after thirteen months of agitation, conceptual
inconsistencies and conflicts with the Roman Catholic hierarchy, at the
beginning of January 1920. The new church, the establishment of which was
initiated by several dozen lower-ranking Czech clerics, was primarily supposed
to be the Czech national church, free of Roman Catholic paternalism. It was to
be a democratic church as regards hierarchical structures (elected clerics, a
combination of the episcopalian and presbyterian principles), tolerant in
dogmatic matters (a symbiosis of the tradition of the eastern Slavic
Christianity and western reformation) and modern in terms of its ritual practice
and law (national liturgical language,Revolution und religiöser Dissens,
158: Schulze linked the importance of national liturgical language in the
Czech environment with Czech society’s frustration over failing language
regulations (1897–1898) by Prime Minister Kazimír Badeni.Sekularizace v západní Evropě (1848–1914) [Secularisation in Western
Europe, 1848–1914] (Brno: Centrum pro stadium demokracie a kultury,
2008), 142–53: Also in the environment of Czech pro-reform Catholicism, as
in the case of German Catholicism (Deutschkatholizismus) or Old Catholicism
(Altkatholizismus), the call to liberalise the celibate was a fundamental
part of the modernisation programme aiming to promote the middle estate
model of liberal morals among the priesthood.Revolution und religiöser Dissens, 142.Populace
České republiky 1918–1991 [Population of the Czech Republic]
(Praha: Česká demografická společnost, Sociologický ústav Akademie věd ČR,
1994), 12.
While most historical works dedicated to topics relating to the Czechoslovak
Church were based on the biographies of its representatives, the histories of
specific communities or its constitutive phase (M. Schulze Wessel), topics
relating to social history have so far been voiced only very rarely. This paper
primarily explores the question of how the majority of the Czech (Czechoslovak)
public, i.e. the working class,Dějiny
Ostravy [History of Ostrava] (Ostrava: Sfinga, 1993), 312, 313: In
1930 the working class prevailed in the economically active part of
population, with 64.9 % in the so-called Great Ostrava region and with 74.7
% in the Slezská Ostrava judicial district.
The Czechoslovak Church, which obtained state approval in September 1920, found
most response in larger cities, industrial regions and several rural areas in
Moravia, Eastern Silesia and in Central and Eastern Bohemia, most of which were
linked to the activities of pro-reform chaplains and catechists. In mid-February
1921, 5.2 % of the population of the Czech lands claimed affiliation to the new
national church community. Nine years later, in December 1930, 7.3 % (779 672
people)Populace České republiky, 12.Český biografický slovník XX. století, I.
díl: A–J [Czech Biographical Dictionary of the 20th Century; Vol. I: A–J] (Praha and Litomyšl: Petr Meissner and Paseka, 1999),
371. Matěj Pavlík / Bishop Gorazd (St. Gorazd II) is an emblematic figure in
the Czech history of religion in the 1st half of
the 20th century: a Catholic priest,
psychologist and chaplain of the psychiatric hospital in Kroměříž, he was
ousted from the Roman Catholic church on 3 September 1920, following which
he joined the Czechoslovak Church, from which he was ostracised on 21 June
1924 after being consecrated as a bishop in Beograd (25 September 1921) and
after a mission among the North American Czechoslovaks. Gorazd’s work, the
Czech Orthodox Church under the Serbian and Constantinopolitan jurisdiction,
was dissolved after the men behind the assassination attempt on Heydrich (27
May 1942) were found in the Orthodox cathedral in Prague. Bishop Gorazd was
executed on 4 September 1942 and canonised by the Orthodox Church in
September 1987.Moderní dějiny: časopis pro dějiny 19. a 20. století /
Modern History: Journal for the History of the 19th and 20th Century 23
(2015): 89–126.
The idea of national, social and religious revolution resonated particularly strongly in the region of Ostrava (also called Ostravsko), the centre of the Czechoslovak coal, iron, steel and heavy chemical industries. In the district of Slezská Ostrava, situated in the region,
26.6 % of the local population declared affiliation to the Czechoslovak Church in
1921.Ostrava: sborník k dějinám Ostravy a Ostravska 26
(2012): 163.th century, Ostravsko underwent a period of national
and social turmoil,Ostrava: příspěvky k dějinám a současnosti Ostravy a
Ostravska 21 (2003): 162–96: The drastic Germanisation of
the local Slavic workers was infamous in Vítkovice (today
Ostrava-Vítkovice), a company town controlled by Vítkovické Iron Works, one
of the most important Cisleithanian weapons industry enterprises during
World War One, together with the Škoda arms factory in Pilsen. In no other
village did the German population grow so quickly to the detriment of the
original Slavic population as in Vítkovice.Sociální
problémy: revue pro sociální theorii a praksi 2, No. 1 (1932):
8.Lidé z kolonií vyprávějí své dějiny [People from the Colonies Tell
Their History], ed. Martin Jemelka (Ostrava: Repronis, 2009),
118–22.
Radvanice ve Slezsku, a neighbouring suburban miners’ borough which now lies
within the city of Ostrava, almost 40 % of whose inhabitants lived in three
worker colonies in 1921, became the cradle of the Czechoslovak Church in
Northern Moravia and Czech Silesia.Ostravské dělnické
kolonie II: závodní kolonie kamenouhelných dolů a koksoven ve slezské
části Ostravy [Ostrava’s Worker Colonies II: Factory Colonies of Coal
Mines and Coke Plants in the Silesian Part of Ostrava], ed. Martin
Jemelka (Ostrava: Ostravská univerzita v Ostravě, 2012), 723.Těšínsko: vlastivědný časopis Český Těšín 48, No. 3 (2005):
23.Palcát [Mace] on the Catholics’
unsuccessful attempt to reclaim the Roman Catholic church in Radvanice ve
Slezsku on 5 January 1921, which had been illegally seized by worshippers of the
Czechoslovak church. They had laboriously collected the funds to build it, at
the time still as Roman Catholics.Palcát: Týdeník národní církve československé diecéze
ostravské [Mace: The Weekly of the National Czechoslovak Church, Ostrava
Dioceses] 8, No. 39, 29. 9. 1929.
The “red” priest Ferdinand Stibor (1869–1956), formerly a Catholic (1894) and
later a Czechoslovak priest (1920), bishop (1922–1950) and eventually
vice-patriarch of the Czech-Moravian Church (1942–1945), one of the four
signatories of the founding deed of the Czechoslovak Church,Za lepší církví: Dušezpytná studie o příčinách přestupů do Církve československé [For a Better Church: A Soul Research Study on the Causes of Conversions to the Czechoslovak Church] (Praha:
Ústřední rada Československé církve v Praze, 1930), 231–33: The Provolání, kterým byla 11. ledna 1920 prohlášena v denním
tisku a s kazatelny chrámu sv. Mikuláše v Praze samostatná
československá církev [The Manifest which declared the independent
Czechoslovak Church in the daily press and from the pulpit of St.
Nicholas church in Prague on 11 January 1920] was signed by B.
Zahradník-Brodský, priest in Ouběnice and trade union councillor at the
Ministry of Education and National Awareness, ThDr. K. Farský, secondary
school teacher of religion in Pilsen, G. Procházka, priest in Jenišovice,
near Turnov, and F. Stibor, priest in Radvanice ve Slezsku.Masarykův slovník naučný: lidová encyklopedie všeobecných
znalostí, VI. díl [Masaryk’s Encyclopedia: People’s Encyclopedia of
General Knowledge. Vol. VI] (Praha: Československý kompas, 1932),
967.Revolution und religiöser Dissens, 126: The
author was probably the first to notice these substantial
connotations.
It was to Stibor’s credit that as early as in the first post-war census, 63.7 %
of the inhabitants of Radvanice ve Slezsku declared their affiliation to the
Czechoslovak Church, and in the three neighbouring Silesian villages, Heřmanice,
Kunčičky and Michálkovice, it was more than 30 %. It took a further nine years
before the Czechoslovak Church also established itself in the more urbanised
Moravian villages in an area which now forms part of Ostrava. Its members made
up more than 20 % of the population in seven Moravian villages, today also part
of Ostrava.
It was not only in Ostravsko, where 22.8 % inhabitants of the Moravská Ostrava
district and up to one third of the population of the Slezská Ostrava district
changed their denomination in 1921–1930,The Hungarian Historical Review: Acta
Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae – New Series 3 (2014):
883–85.th anniversary of the foundation of the Czechoslovak
Church, held at Masarykovo Sq. in Moravská Ostrava on 5 July 1930, workers
comprised up to 80 % of all the 60 000 worshippers in the Silesian
dioceses.th anniversary of the establishment of the Church
(1930) carried out among the readers of Český zápas [Czech
Struggle], its official periodical. The questionnaires were filled in
by 625 worshippers answering a variety of questions about the reasons why they
had joined the Czechoslovak Church and how they felt about its development so
far.Za
lepší církví, 49–54.Český zápas as the periodical for
Czech worshippers and Palcát as the periodical for those
from the Ostrava (or Moravian-Silesian) dioceses. However, a long letter was
attached – and published at the end of the survey – from Hulváky, a working
quarter of Ostrava shadowed by the Vítkovice iron works, whose author provided
an intimate insight into the broad range of reasons for joining the Czechoslovak
Church.
The key motivation for this 69-year-old female respondent to convert in April
1925 was the use of Czech liturgical language and the emotional impact that
liturgy had in the national language: “During the service I could hear the
cleric [Author’s note: this was Bishop F. Stibor] praying nicely in Czech, I
could understand everything. […] When he started his spiritual address, I went
forward right up to the altar as I did not want to miss a word of what he said
[…] I told my husband how much I liked a service held in Czech so that everyone
can join the cleric in prayer all the way through the holy mass.”Der Krieg als Seelsorge: Katholische Kirche
und Volksfrömmigkeit in Tirol im Ersten Weltkrieg [War as Care for the
Soul: The Catholic Church and Folk Devotion in Tirol during World War
One] (Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 2005), 159.Sekularizace, 142–53.Za
lepší církví, 237.
The dynamism of the confessional mobility in the Czech lands in the 1920s and
1930s, and the fluctuation in the number of followers of the Czechoslovak
Church, are evidenced in many resources, primarily in the census statisticsSecularization and
the Working Class: The Czech Lands and Central Europe in the 19th Century, eds. Lukáš
Fasora, Jiří Hanuš and Jiří Malíř (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock
Publishers, Pickwick Publications, 2011), 174–92.
Although Ostrava’s workers sympathised with the resignation from priesthood
privileges such as confessional secrecy, celibacy and clerical vestments and
uniforms, and were enthusiastic about the use of Czech language in liturgical
matters, they remained indifferent as regards the theological disputes between
the Protestant sympathisers and Orthodox traditionalists during the constitutive
years. As the hierarchs of the Czechoslovak Church soon protested, the
appointment of workers as members of the councils of elders, on the contrary,
brought forth the tension of political party strife and class rivalry into the
life of the local communities – conflicts between the worshippers and councils
of elders on one side, and the clerics or religious teachers on the other side,
became a constant phenomenon faced by the new church community in Ostrava
region.(“the
rebellious German nature”). He was not helped even by his
successful campaign to build the organ in the cathedral. The fact that it
was delivered by the German company Rieger, although cheaper than their
Czech competitors, was probably fatal for Auer on the eve of the Munich
Agreement.
While the ideologists of the Czechoslovak Church praised its numbers of
followers, however far this was from the original assumption of the entire Czech
(Czechoslovak) nation converting to a new national church, soon after 1930 the
Czech sociology of religion inquired into the reasons why the newly acquired
identity was so fragile and the confessional mobility of the worshippers of the
Czechoslovak Church had increased, a fact which the hierarchs of the
Czechoslovak Church really did not like to admit.Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 69, No. 4
(2017).Boj o hrad I.: Hrad a pětka 1918–1926 [The
Struggle for the Castle I.: The Castle and the Five] (Praha:
Panevropa 1996), 30, 31.Za lepší
církví, 9–25: The establishment of the Czechoslovak Church was
sharply criticised by the important Czech historian and probably Masaryk’s
most influential ideological opponent, Josef Pekař (1870–1937), according to
whom the constitution of a new national church in the vicinity of what were
mostly Catholic Hungarians, Poles and Austrians seriously tarnished the
international prestige of the young Czechoslovak state. Pekař’s argument was
quite unique in the Czech environment, given its European
perspective.“an
old business under a new name”.Sociologický časopis 1 (1965): 146.Patriarcha Dr. Miroslav Novák: život mezi
svastikou a rudou hvězdou [Patriarch Dr. Miroslav Novák: Life between
the Swastika and Red Star] (Brno: L. Marek, 2010), 75 ff. Hrdlička,
Život a dílo, 313 ff.
Compared with the Roman Catholic Church, the Czechoslovak Church lagged behind
also in the programmatic development of social topics and social ministry, as it
paid more attention developing its own organisation. Building up the Church
provided new employment opportunities at all levels, including organ players and
teachers of religion, especially because in the exchange of generations around
the year 1930 the new clerics often recruited from among pauperised teachers or
state employees seeking an opportunity for a quick career growth, stable income
and social status in the young church. As regards the struggle against the
economic crisis, the Czechoslovak Church confined itself to traditional charity
methods, as it began to build a network of community charities as late as in the
middle of 1928.
What also turned out as problematic in the long-term perspective was the
resignation from apostolate among other than Czechoslovak nationalities. In 1930
when the Czechoslovak Church had 779 762 members in the Czech lands, only 1284
of its worshippers (0.2 %) were not members of the Czechoslovak nation.Statistik
der deutschen Katholiken, 44, 53: In the Moravian-Silesian land
with a population of 3 565 010 and 160 968 members of the Czechoslovak
Church, only 189 Germans, 137 Poles, 56 Hungarians and 17 other people were
not of Czechoslovak nationality.Obyvateľstvo
Slovenska [Slovak Population] (Bratislava: Infostat – Inštitút
informatiky a štatistiky, Výskumné demografické centrum, 2002),
11.
It seems that besides the social revolution agenda, it was
also the project of religious revolution that broke down
in interwar Czechoslovakia, unless we consider this to have been fulfilled by
Czech Protestant churches merging to form the Evangelical Church of Czech
Brethren,Ustavující generální sněm českobratrské církve evangelické
konaný v Praze 17. a 18. prosince 1918 [Founding General Synod of the
Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, Held in Prague on 17 and 18
December 1918] (Praha: Synodní výbor Českobratrské církve
evangelické, 1919), 1–59: The Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, today
the most numerous Protestant denomination in the Czech Republic with 51 936
members in 2011, was established in a merger of Evangelical communities of
the Augsburg and Helvetian confession which were Czech in nationality at the
General Synod in December 1918. The union of approx. 250 thousand Czech
Evangelical worshippers was not joined by the Augsburg and Helvetian
communities which were of German or Polish nationality and smaller
Evangelical churches claiming the tradition of the Unity of the Brethren or
stemming from the activities of the originally North American missionaries
from the end of 19th century.Populace České republiky, 12.
Državna revolucija, ki je privedla do neodvisne Češkoslovaške republike (1918), ter socialna revolucija, s katero se je češko ozemlje dokončno preobrazilo v industrijsko in podeželsko regijo, sta vključevali tudi versko revolucijo, ki so jo vodili nekateri češki katoliški duhovniki. Njihove zahteve po demokratizaciji, liberalizaciji in nacionalizaciji češkega katolištva so se utelesile v obliki Češkoslovaške cerkve (1920), doživele pa močan odziv, zlasti v industrializiranih predelih na Češkem, predvsem v Ostravski regiji, ki leži na češko-nemško-poljski jezikovni, etnični in verski meji. Kljub mnogim ideološkim in osebnim krizam se je leta 1930, po desetletju obstoja Češkoslovaške cerkve, za njene pripadnike opredelilo 7,8 % češkoslovaških prebivalcev, predvsem iz srednjega in delavskega razreda, ki sta jih pritegnili dogmatska strpnost in teološka prilagodljivost. Čeprav se je Češkoslovaška cerkev predstavljala kot eden od stebrov češkoslovaške narodne identitete in je bila ponosna na vse več vernikov, katerih število je doseglo vrhunec leta 1950, ko jih je bilo približno milijon, je med prvo generacijo njenih pripadnikov prišlo do dinamične spremembe, zaradi česar so se verniki oddaljili od izvirnega koncepta, po katerem naj bi se celoten češkoslovaški narod spreobrnil in pridružil novi »državni in progresivni cerkvi«. Sociologi tistega časa so napovedali, da bo protikatolištvo živelo le kratek čas. Pomanjkanje dobro pripravljenega socialnega programa se je za delavce izkazalo kot problematično, težava pa je bila tudi ta, da cerkev ni imela stabilnega političnega partnerja in ni bila sposobna nasloviti pripadnikov drugih narodov v Češkoslovaški republiki razen Čehov. Skupaj z neuspehom programa socialne revolucije, ki so ga komunisti prevzeli sicer šele leta 1948, je čez čas razpadel tudi projekt Češkoslovaške cerkve. Slednja je s tem postala verska skupnost, ki je v Češkoslovaški republiki v obdobju po 50. letih prejšnjega stoletja najhitreje izginila.