Page:The religious conditions in Czechoslovakia.djvu/5



UR religious development as well as the religious conditions in our Republic indicate the desirability of separating Church and State. I necessarily expected that by the union with Slovakia and the addition of Carpathian Ruthenia to our Republic, the ecclesiastical and religious conditions among our people also would become more complicated; and I foresaw that, as has always happened in other countries, political liberty would render more acute the ecclesiastical and religious question, and for that very reason I desired to limit this process to a purely ecclesiastical and religious field.

We already have a new Czechoslovak Church, and Orthodoxy is also spreading; the number of Protestants has been increased by a considerable portion of the Slovaks (of the Augsburg denomination), the Uniates of Carpathian Ruthenia have been added, while on the united territory of our Republic the considerable number of Jews has also gained in importance. Thus our Republic is composed not only of several nationalities, but it also has a considerable number of Churches and denominations. We have the Catholic denomination with the Uniate, the Czechoslovak, the Protestant (of various denominations), the Orthodox, the Unitarian, and the Jewish. In addition to all these there is a large number of persons who are without denomination or rather who do not belong to any Church; yet, many of them have their private religious convictions. Amid the hustle of politics few of our people realise how complicated our Republic is in ecclesiastical matters and how acute a religious crisis is occurring in our ecclesiastical life.

Under Austria-Hungary the predominating Church upon the territory now comprising our Republic, was the Catholic one. The native Protestants, the members of the Reformed Church (Calvinists), and the Lutherans (of the Augsburg denomination) upon what were known as the historical territories were recognised by the State but they did not enjoy official favour, while the few foreign missions (Baptists and others) were tolerated more or less. In Slovakia the Slovak minority of Protestants (Lutherans) and a few