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Development and transformation of religious landscape in Prague after the fall of communism

Publication at Faculty of Science |
2014

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is the analysis of trends and processes in the religious landscape of Czech capitol Prague in the period of transformation. In, the society has been secularized to an extent unprecedented in the rest of Europe.

The paper uses also the term religious landscape in a wider sense of the word mostly as both territory and society of a selected larger territorial unit. The general trend of secularization of the Czech (Prague) society is accompanied with diversification, almost atomization of religious communities.

The contribution attempts to monitor the main reasons of transformations of religiosity in Prague after the fall of communism between 1991 and 2011 as well as to seek for fundamental consequences of these changes. Prague has also experienced regional differentiation of religious development, evidenced by the quantitatively dwindling Roman Catholic Church on the one hand and the growing of Brethren Evangelical Free Church on the other hand.

The rising importance of alternative religiosity is probably associated with the trend of secularization of society and thus the transformation of the original Christian society to a society with prevailing occult or esoteric leanings.