Forbidden Faith

Martin Pácha’s book is dedicated to the relationship of the communist regime with religious denominations that operated on the fringe of legality between 1948 and 1989, or those that were not recognised by the state as permitted religious communities. The author’s focus is on Jehovah's Witnesses, Pentecostal Christians, and Seventh-day Adventists. Based on archival research, Pácha has successfully demonstrated that communist Czechoslovakia did not have a uniform religious policy. It approached each denomination, each religious minority, in a distinctive and haphazard manner. There were also fundamental differences between the Czech lands and Slovakia, and even within the Czech part of the republic, there were very significant regional variations. These were caused not only by the unsystematic nature of church policy and a wavering or unanchored ideological approach but also by the attitudes of specific individuals, especially the secretaries for church affairs. Attention is also paid to the repression of members of religious minorities, their exploitation, and their surveillance by the State Security, as well as to questions of religious daily life in Czechoslovakia in the second half of the 20th century.