State Recognition of Churches and Religious Societies as a Test of Religiosity in the Czech Republic

The study first provides a historical overview of the state recognition of churches and religious societies in the territory of the Czech Republic today. The 1874 Austrian law had its role in the recognition of new churches and religious societies also during the First Czechoslovak Republic, when the two largest non-Catholic churches in the present-day Czech Republic, the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren and the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, were also recognised on the basis of that law. It was not until the communist regime abrogated the Austrian legislation still in force in 1949 that the totalitarian state could arbitrarily approve or, on the contrary, stop the activities of some churches. The 1991 Law on Freedom of Religious Belief and the Status of Churches and Religious Societies reintroduced legal administrative procedures for the registration of churches and religious societies in Czechoslovakia. Unlike in the Czech Republic, this law remains in force in the Slovak Republic. The new 2002 Czech Act on Churches and Religious Societies opened the way to official registration for smaller religious associations thanks to a two-stage registration system, as only 300 signatures of persons claiming membership in a church or religious society are needed to start the registration procedure. However, these entities cannot yet, in particular, conclude marriages with civil effects, teach religion in state schools, establish church schools financed from public budgets, or operate in the military and prison system. Moreover, they are not financed from the state budget, as this right of churches was abolished by the 2012 Law on Property Settlement with Churches and Religious Societies. To be able to enter the public sphere in these ways, registered churches and religious societies need to obtain authorisation to exercise these special rights, which is the second stage of registration for newly recognised entities, achievable after ten years at the earliest and after obtaining a membership of approximately ten thousand. In total, 23 new churches and religious societies have already been successfully registered in the Czech Republic under the current legislation at the first stage, although none of them has achieved the required accreditation to exercise special rights. However, the diversity of the churches and religious societies registered so far shows that beneath the apparently agnostic surface there is a continuing interest in religiosity among the Czech population, albeit rather distant from the traditional established churches.