The Limits of Religious Plurality: The Pentecostal Movement in Post-Stalinist Czechoslovakia

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the religious conditions in Post-Stalinist Czechoslovakia on the example of the Pentecostal movement. It enlarges the classical research scope done on a church-state axis by focusing on a minority religious group, which is not only oppressed by the system driven by atheistic imperatives but also must compete with the rival religious organization. By using the concept of the religious field, the study argues that the state socialist system was caught between two different roles. The state tried to diminish the belief in God, but also it was supposed to operate as a guarantor of religious life. The state division of roles enabled believers to take an active part in negotiating their religious independence and even when they failed, it shows that they were not passive objects controlled by the state, but active actors with an agency of their own.