The Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren (ECCB) (Czech: Českobratrská církev evangelická; ČCE) is the largest CzechProtestant church and the second-largest church in the Czech Republic after the Catholic Church. It was formed in 1918 in Czechoslovakia through the unification of the Protestant churches of the Lutheran and Calvinist confessions.
In 2019, the church reported 69,715 baptized members[1] in more than 260 local congregations, which are broken down into 14 seniorates (presbyteries) throughout the Czech Republic. Its membership peaked in 1950 with 402,000 members.[2] Since the end of Communist rule, the Czech Republic's censuses have recorded 203,996 members in 1991,[2] 117,212 in 2001,[3] and 51,936 in 2011.[4]
Reformation in the Czech lands started already in the 15th century, one century before the great Luther's Reformation. At that time, most Czechs (~85%) were Protestant; there were two Protestant churches: the UtraquistHussite Church (1431–1620) and the Unity of the Brethren (1457–1620). (The latter was in the 1720s partially renewed outside of Czech territory as the Moravian Church.) However, non-Catholic churches were forbidden in 1620 when the Bohemian Revolt was decisively defeated and victorious Habsburg rulers imposed harsh Counter-Reformation measures on the Bohemian Crown. This ban was mitigated in 1781 by issuing the Patent of Toleration that permitted Lutheran and Calvinist churches in the Habsburg monarchy but Protestants obtained full equality with the Catholic church legally only as late as in 1867, when Austria-Hungary was created. Nevertheless, other minor churches were still forbidden until the founding of Czechoslovakia in 1918.[6]
The ECCB was established in 1918 by the unification of all Lutheran and Calvinist churches in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. It was intended to be a successor of the Unity of the Brethren (and the Bohemian Reformation in general).
^Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren. "Od vzniku církve" (in Czech). e-cirkev.cz. Archived from the original on 14 February 2018. Retrieved 13 February 2018.
^Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren. "Ecumenical relations". e-cirkev.cz. Archived from the original on 14 February 2018. Retrieved 13 February 2018.
Abrams, Bradley F. (2004). "Socialism and Protestant Intellectuals: The "Kingdom of God on Earth"?". The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation: Czech Culture and the Rise of Communism. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN978-0-7425-3023-2.
Matějka, Ondřej (2022). ""The 'Proton Pseudos' of Our Life After May 1945": Czech Protestants and the Expulsion of Sudeten Germans". Collective Identities and Post-War Violence in Europe, 1944–48: Reshaping the Nation. Springer International Publishing. pp. 165–194. ISBN978-3-030-78386-0.
Nešpor, Zdeněk R.; Vojtíšek, Zdeněk (2016). Encyklopedie menších křesťanských církví v České republice [Encyclopedia of smaller Christian churches in the Czech Republic] (in Czech). Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press. ISBN978-80-246-3315-2.
^Those are legal umbrella bodies which represent their member churches before the national government. They encompass multiple individual autonomous churches of differnet traditions which are themselves members of the CPCE.
