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In theCzech Republic, 47.8% of the population isirreligious (atheist,agnostic or other irreligious life stances), while 21.3% of the population are believers. The religious identity of the country has changed drastically since the first half of the 20th century, when more than 90% ofCzechs wereChristians.[1][2] As of 2021, 11.7% of the population identified withChristianity (9.3% identifying withCatholicism and 2.4% with all other Christian denominations); 10.8% identified with other religious identities or beliefs.[1] According tosociologist Jan Spousta, not all the irreligious people are atheists; indeed, since the late 20th century there has been an increasing distancing from both Christian dogmatism and atheism, and at the same time ideas and non-institutional models similar to those ofEastern religions have become widespread through movements started by variousgurus, and hermetic and mystical paths.[3]
TheChristianisation of the Czechs (Bohemians,Moravians andSilesians) occurred in the 9th and 10th centuries, when they were incorporated into the Catholic Church and abandoned indigenousSlavic paganism. After theBohemian Reformation which began in the late 14th century, most Czechs becameHussites, that is to say followers ofJan Hus,Petr Chelčický and other regionalProto-Protestant religious reformers.Taborites andUtraquists were the two major Hussite factions. During theHussite Wars in the early 15th century, the Utraquists sided with the Catholic Church, and following the joint Utraquist—Catholic victory, Utraquism was accepted by the Catholic Church as a legitimate doctrine to be practised in theKingdom of Bohemia, while all the other Hussite movements were prohibited.Jewish minorities were also present in the country.[4]
After theProtestant Reformation in the 16th century, some in Bohemia, especiallySudeten Germans, went with the teachings ofMartin Luther (Lutheranism). In the wake of the Reformation, Utraquist Hussites took a renewed increasinglyanti-Catholic stance while some of the defeated Hussite factions (notably the Taborites) were revived. The defeat of Bohemians estates by theHabsburg monarchy in theBattle of White Mountain in 1620 affected the religious sentiments of the Czechs, as the Habsburgs endorsed aCounter-Reformation to forcibly reconvert all Czechs, even Utraquist Hussites, back to the Catholic Church.[4]
Since the Battle of White Mountain, widespreadanti-Catholic sentiment and resistance to the Catholic Church underlay the history of the Czech lands even when the whole population nominally belonged to the Catholic Church, and the Czechs have been historically characterised as "tolerant and even indifferent towards religion".[5] At the end of the 18th century, Protestant and Jewish minorities were once again granted some rights, but they had to wait another century to have full equality.[4] In 1918 the Habsburg monarchy collapsed, and in the newly independentCzechoslovakia, in 1920, the Catholic Church suffered a schism as theCzechoslovak Hussite Church re-established itself as an independent organism.[4] In 1939–1945,Nazism annihilated or expelled most of the Jewish population.[6] The Catholic Church lost about half of its adherents during theMarxist-Leninist period of theCzechoslovak Socialist Republic (1960–1990), and has continued to decline in the contemporary epoch after theVelvet Revolution of 1989 restoredliberal democracy in Czechoslovakia.[7] Protestantism did not recover immediately after the Habsburg Counter-Reformation; it regained some ground when the Habsburg monarchy disintegrated in the early 20th century (in 1950 about 17% of the Czechs were Protestants, mostly Hussites), although after the 1950s it declined again and today it is a very small minority (around 1%).[1]
According to the official censuses conducted by theCzech Statistical Office, Catholicism was the religion of 39.1% of the Czechs in 1991 and has declined to 9.3% in 2021; Protestantism and other types of Christianity declined in the same period from around 5% to around 2%; at the same time, adherents of other religions or believers without an identifiable religion grew from 0.3% to 10.8%.[1] Small minority religions in theCzech Republic includeBuddhism,Islam,Paganism,Hinduism,Judaism, and others.[1] In the census of 2021, 47.8% of Czechs declared that they did not believe in any religion, while 30.1% did not respond.[1]
| Religion | 1921 | 1930 | 1950 | 1991 | 2001 | 2011 | 2021 | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | |
| Christianity | 9,150,872 | 91.5 | 9,691,392 | 90.8 | 8,332,458 | 93.7 | 4,518,512 | 43.9 | 3,094,227 | 30.2 | 1,379,802 | 13.2 | 1,241,214 | 11.7 |
| —Catholicism | 8,210,771 | 82.1 | 8,390,228 | 78.6 | 6,824,908 | 76.7 | 4,028,415 | 39.1 | 2,748,455 | 26.9 | 1,092,346 | 10.5 | 985,318 | 9.3 |
| ——Roman Catholic Church | 8,201,464 | 82.0 | 8,378,079 | 78.5 | 6,792,046 | 76.3 | 4,021,385 | 39.0 | 2,740,780 | 26.8 | 1,082,463 | 10.4 | 741,175 | 7.0 |
| ——Catholics without church | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 235,834 | 2.2 |
| ——Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church | 9,307 | 0.1 | 12,149 | 0.1 | 32,862 | 0.4 | 7,030 | 0.1 | 7,675 | 0.1 | 9,883 | 0.1 | 8,309 | 0.1 |
| —Eastern Orthodox Church (majorityCzech and Slovak) | 9,221 | 0.1 | 24,488 | 0.2 | 50,365 | 0.6 | 19,354 | 0.2 | 22,968 | 0.2 | 26,370 | 0.2 | 41,178 | 0.4 |
| —Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren | 231,199 | 2.3 | 290,994 | 2.7 | 401,729 | 4.5 | 203,996 | 2.0 | 117,212 | 1.1 | 51,858 | 0.5 | 32,577 | 0.3 |
| —Czechoslovak Hussite Church | 523,232 | 5.2 | 779,672 | 7.3 | 946,813 | 10.6 | 178,036 | 1.7 | 99,103 | 1.0 | 39,229 | 0.4 | 23,610 | 0.2 |
| —Jehovah's Witnesses | – | – | – | – | – | – | 14,575 | 0.1 | 23,162 | 0.2 | 13,069 | 0.1 | 13,298 | 0.1 |
| —Augsburg ConfessionLutheran churches (majoritySilesian) | 150,687 | 1.5 | 52,485 | 0.5 | 80,144 | 0.9 | 37,281 | 0.4 | 34,317 | 0.3 | 17,379 | 0.2 | 11,047 | 0.1 |
| —German Evangelical Church in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia | – | – | 130,981 | 1.2 | 6,401 | 0.1 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| —Old Catholic Church of the Czech Republic | 20,103 | 0.2 | 22,544 | 0.2 | – | – | 2,725 | 0.03 | 1,605 | 0.02 | 1,730 | 0.02 | 672 | 0.01 |
| —Other Christians[α] | 14,966 | 0.1 | 31,033 | 0.3 | 22,098 | 0.2 | 34,130 | 0.3 | 47,405 | 0.5 | 137,821 | 1.3 | 133,514 | 1.3 |
| Jediism | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 15,070 | 0.1 | 21,539 | 0.2 |
| Buddhism | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 6,817 | 0.07 | 6,101 | 0.06 | 5,757 | 0.05 |
| Islam | – | – | – | – | – | – | 495 | 0.0 | 3,699 | 0.04 | 3,358 | 0.03 | 5,244 | 0.05 |
| Paganism | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 863 | 0.01 | 2,953 | 0.03 |
| Pastafarianism | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 2,696 | 0.03 |
| Hinduism | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 1,061 | 0.01 | 2,408 | 0.02 | 2,024 | 0.02 |
| Judaism | 125,083 | 1.3 | 117,551 | 1.1 | 8,038 | 0.1 | 1,292 | 0.01 | 1,515 | 0.01 | 1,474 | 0.01 | 1,901 | 0.02 |
| Biotronics | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 1,053 | 0.01 |
| Other religion | 2,393 | 0.02 | 266 | 0.002 | 12,786 | 0.1 | 35,651 | 0.3 | 180,769 | 1.8 | 628 | 0.01 | 89,254 | 0.8 |
| Believers without religion | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 760,316 | 7.3 | 1,005,788 | 9.6 |
| No religion | 716,515 | 7.2 | 834,144 | 7.8 | 519,962 | 5.8 | 4,112,864 | 39.9 | 6,039,991 | 59.0 | 3,604,095 | 34.5 | 5,027,794 | 47.8 |
| Not stated | 10,871 | 0.1 | 31,033 | 0.3 | 22,889 | 0.3 | 1,665,617 | 16.2 | 901,981 | 8.8 | 4,662,455 | 44.7 | 3,162,540 | 30.1 |
| Total population | 10,005,734 | 10,674,386 | 8,896,133 | 10,302,215 | 10,230,060 | 10,436,560 | 10,524,167 | |||||||
Census statistics 1921–2021:[1]
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TheCzechs gradually converted toChristianity fromSlavic paganism between the 9th and the 10th centuries, and Christianity—especially theCatholic Church, with significant minorities ofProtestantism, and even majorities in some periods, from the 15th century onwards[4]—remained the religion of nearly all the population until the end of the 19th century.[8]Bořivoj I, Duke of Bohemia, baptised by theSaints Cyril and Methodius, was the first ruler ofBohemia to adopt Christianity as thestate religion. Since the late 19th century, and especially throughout the 20th century, Christianity was gradually abandoned by the majority of the Czechs and today it remains the religion of a minority.[8] From 1950 to 2021, the official censuses of theCzech Statistical Office recorded a decline of professed Christianity from about 94% to about 12% of the population of the Czech lands.[1]
TheMarxist–Leninist period of theCzechoslovak Socialist Republic (1960–1990) certainly saw an oppression of Christianity, thus contributing to its decline, but also hampered the appearance of any alternatives in the area of religion, so that Christianity continued to have a monopolistic position in the religious interpretation of the world.[9] Only the restoration ofliberal democracy after theVelvet Revolution of 1989 opened the country to the spread of non-Christian religions.[9] According to the scholar Jan Spousta, throughout the 20th century Christianity gradually lost its character as the Czechs' traditional religion, and was abandoned by most while turning into a religion of sincere choice for the minority who continues to identify itself with it and practise it.[10] Spousta also found that Christians in the early 21st century tended to be older and less educated than the general population, and females were far more likely than males to be believers.[8] Christianity remained relatively higher in percentage among the populations of the agrarian south-eastern regions ofMoravia, while the percentages were already very low in the large cities and the north-western more industrialised regions ofBohemia.[11]
Roman Catholicism was the main tradition of Christianity historically practised by the Czechs after they converted from Slavic paganism, and although in the 15th and 16th century many Czechs—in many areas and periods most—joinedProto-Protestant andProtestant churches, theHabsburg monarchy which gained imperial power on the Czech lands in the early 17th century enacted aCounter-Reformation movement which reconverted most Czechs to the Catholic Church.[4] By the time of the collapse of the Habsburg power and the establishment of independentCzechoslovakia in 1918, the position of the Catholic Church had already been weakened by criticism from the intellectual class and by the social changes brought by the rapid industrialisation of especially the northern and western pars of the country,Bohemia.[4] At the same time, the association of Catholicism with the unpopular erstwhile Habsburg power led to widespreadanticlericalism andanti-Catholicism, and to a revival of the native historical form of Czech Protestantism, namelyHussitism; in 1920, Hussites split out of the Catholic Church with about 10% of the formerly Catholic clergy and established themselves as theCzechoslovak Hussite Church.[4]
From 1950 onwards, Marxist–Leninists gained power in Czechoslovakia, which from 1960 to 1989 became the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, and while they fought all religions, Catholicism was targeted with particular aggressiveness.[6] After the Velvet Revolution in 1989 and the restoration of liberal democracy in the Czech lands, Catholicism, like other forms of Christianity, did not recover and continued to lose adherents.[6] The data from the national censuses show that Catholics decreased from 76.7% of the Czechs in 1950 prior to the Marxist-Leninist period, to 39.1% in 1991 after the fall of Marxism-Leninism, to 26.9% in 2001, to 10.5% in 2011, and to 9.3% in 2021.[1]
In the late 14th century, the religious and social reformerJan Hus started aProto-Protestant movement which would later be calledHussitism after him. Although Jan Hus was declaredheretic by the Catholic Church andburnt at the stake inConstance in 1415, his followers seceded from the Catholic Church and in theHussite Wars (1419–1434) they defeated five crusades organised against them by the Holy Roman EmperorSigismund.Petr Chelčický continued in the wake of theBohemian Hussite Reformation and gave rise to the HussiteMoravian Church. During the 15th and 16th century, most of Czechs were adherents of Hussitism, and at the same time manySudeten Germans of the Czech lands joined theProtestant Reformation ofMartin Luther and his doctrine (Lutheranism).[4]
After 1526, Bohemia came increasingly under the control of theHabsburg monarchy, as the Habsburgs became first the elected and later the hereditary rulers of Bohemia. TheDefenestration of Prague and the subsequent revolt against the Habsburgs in 1618 marked the start of theThirty Years' War, which quickly spread throughoutCentral Europe. In 1620, the rebellion in Bohemia was crushed at theBattle of White Mountain, and the ties between Bohemia and the Habsburgs' hereditary lands in Austria were strengthened. The war had a devastating effect on the local population, and the people were forced to convert back to Catholicism under the Habsburgs'Counter-Reformation efforts.[4]
In 1918, when the Habsburg monarchy disintegrated and independent Czechoslovakia emerged, most of the Czechs professed formal affiliation to Catholicism; anti-Catholic sentiments spread quickly as Catholicism was viewed as the religion re-imposed by the Habsburg, so that in 1920 theCzechoslovak Hussite Church split off the Catholic Church and was joined by about 10% of the former Catholic clergy,[4] and 10.6% of the Czechs had become again Hussites by 1950.[1] The Czechoslovak Church was supported by the government of the first president of Czechoslovakia,Tomáš Masaryk (1850–1937).[4] In the same years, theEvangelical Church of Czech Brethren (adoctrinally mixed church of Lutheran,Calvinist and Hussite traditions) represented another 4.5% of the population, and another 1% were members of Lutheran churches of theAugsburg Confession (mostly of theSilesian Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession).[1]
During the Marxist–Leninist years of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic all religions were discouraged by the government; the Czech Protestant churches lost many members (the Czechoslovak Church lost 80% of its adherents), and they continued to decline after the restoration of liberal democracy after 1989.[6] Protestantism today constitutes a small minority of around 1% of the population; according to the 2021 census, only 0.2% of the Czechs (23,610) adhered to the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, 0.3% (32,577) adhered to the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, and 0.1% (11,047) were Lutherans of the Augsburg Confession (still mostly Silesian).[1] The Moravian Church, historically tied to the region ofMoravia, was still present with a very small number of adherents, about 1,257.[1] Other Protestant minorities includeAnglicans,Adventists,Apostolic Pentecostals,Baptists,Brethren,Methodists, and nondenominationalEvangelicals.[1]
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In the 2021 census, 41,178 Czechs (0.4% of the population) identified themselves as adherents of theEastern Orthodox Church, almost all of them members of theOrthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia and only a few hundred being members of the Czech branch of theRussian Orthodox Church.[1] In the same census, 13,298 (0.1%) identified themselves asJehovah's Witnesses, and very small minorities asMormons ofthe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, adherents of theUnification Church, and of other minor Christian churches.[1] 71,089 Czechs (0.7%) identified themselves simply as "Christians".[1]
In the 2021 census, 5,257 Czechs declared themselves adherents ofBuddhism.[1] ManyVietnamese Czechs, who constitute the largest immigrant ethnic group in the Czech Republic, are adherents ofMahayana traditions ofVietnamese Buddhism. Ethnic Czech Buddhists are otherwise mostly followers ofVajrayana traditions ofTibetan Buddhism, Mahayana traditions ofKorean Buddhism, andTheravada traditions. There are various Tibetan Buddhist, Korean Buddhist and Theravada Buddhist centres in the country; many of those of the Tibetan tradition follow theDiamond Way, founded by the DanishlamaOle Nydahl.[12]
The entire Pagan community in the Czech Republic, includingSlavic Rodnovery (Czech:Rodnověří) as well as other Pagan religions, was described byscholars of religion as small in 2013.[14] In the 2021 census, 2,953 Czechs identified themselves as Pagans (including 189 Druids).[1] The first Pagan groups to emerge in the Czech Republic in the 1990s were oriented towardsGermanic Heathenry andCeltic Druidry,[15] while modern Slavic Rodnovery began to develop around 1995–1996 with the foundation of two groups, the National Front of the Castists andRadhoŝť, which in 2000 were merged to form the Community of Native Faith (Společenství Rodná Víra).[16] There are also adherents of the Rodnover denomination ofYnglism; the Civic Association Tartaria (Občanské sdružení Tartaria), headquartered inSlovakia, also caters to Czech Ynglists.[17] Besides Slavic Rodnovers, Germanic Heathens and Celtic Druids, in the Czech Republic there are alsoWiccan followers,[18] and oneKemetic organisation,Per Kemet.[19]
The Community of Native Faith was among the government-recognised religious entities until 2010, when it was unregistered and became an informal association due to ideological disagreements between the Castists and other subgroups about whether Slavic religion wasIndo-European hierarchic worship (supported by the Castists),Neolithicmother goddess worship, or neither.[20] The leader of the organisation since 2007 has been Richard Bigl (Khotebud), and it is today devoted to the celebration of annual holidays and individual rites of passage, to the restoration of sacred sites associated with Slavic deities, and to the dissemination of knowledge about Slavic spirituality in Czech society.[21] While the contemporary association is completely adogmatic and apolitical,[22] and refuses to "introduce a solid religious or organisational order" due to past internal conflicts,[23] between 2000 and 2010 it had a complex structure,[22] and redacted aCode of Native Faith defining a precise doctrine for Czech Rodnovery (which firmly rejected theBook of Veles).[24] ThoughRodná Víra no longer maintains structured territorial groups, it is supported by individual adherents scattered throughout the Czech Republic.[25]
The deep changes in the religious sensibility of the Czechs since the early 20th century, and the loss of religious monopoly and decline of Christianity, opened a space for the growth of new forms of religiousness,[9] including ideas and non-institutional, diffuse models similar to those ofEastern religions,[26] with the spread of movements centred around variousgurus, and hermetic and mystical paths.[11]
In the 2021 census, 21,539 Czechs (0.2% of the population) identified themselves as adherents ofJediism (a real philosophy based on that of the fictionalJedi of theStar Warsspace opera[27]), 5,244 asMuslims, 2,696 asPastafarians (an antitheist parody of religion), 2,024 asHindus, 1,901 asJews, 1,053 as adherents ofBiotronics (incorporated as the Society of Josef Zezulka[28]), and 89,254 (0.8% of the population) as adherents of other minority religions.[1] Another 9.6% of the Czechs declared themselves as having some belief but not identifiable with any specific religion.[1]
In the 2021 census, 5,027,794 Czechs, corresponding to 47.8% of the total population of the Czech Republic, identified themselves asirreligious, includingatheism,agnosticism and other irreligious life stances.[1] Some Czech atheists have organised themselves in the Civic Association of Atheists (Občanské sdružení ateistů), which is a member of theAtheist Alliance International.[29] Not all irreligious Czechs are atheists; a number of non-religious people believe or practise unorganised forms of spirituality which do not require strict adherence or identification, similar toEastern religions.[26]
