Lief 🗽
Lief
Atlas Legend
Posts: 45,029
|
|
« on: July 30, 2013, 01:28:14 PM » |
|
Religion is simply not part of the Czech national identity. In Poland and Slovakia, countries with very similar cultures, for instance, being Catholic is part of being a Pole or a Slovak (even if a lot of these "Catholic" Poles and Slovaks are these days not actually religious in anything but name). But when the idea of the Czech nation was being developed in the 19th century, organized religion just wasn't a part of it. Most of the big events in Czech history that endure in the national consciousness were rebellions against or oppression by religious authority, whether its the Hussite rebellion or Battle of White Mountain (and the execution of the (Protestant) Czech nobility by the Habsburgs). The church has always (since the 15th century at least) been seen as a symbol of oppression in the Czech Republic, and so opposing the church is in many ways part of being a Czech.
|