February 18, 2018 – Please pray for Czechia (Czech Republic)
The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, is a landlocked nation state in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west, Austria to the south, Slovakia to the east and Poland to the northeast. The Czech Republic includes the historical territories of Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia.
The Czech Republic has a temperate continental climate, with warm summers and cold, cloudy and snowy winters. The temperature difference between summer and winter is relatively high, due to the landlocked geographical position.
The Czech Republic has 10.6 million inhabitants and the capital and largest city is Prague, with over 1.2 million residents. It is a developed country with an advanced, high income export-oriented social market economy based on services, manufacturing and innovation.
The Czech Republic has one of the least religious populations in the world with 75% to 79% of people not declaring any religion or faith in polls and the percentage of convinced atheists being third highest only behind China and Japan. The Czech people have been historically characterized as “tolerant and even indifferent towards religion”.
Roman Catholicism was introduced in the 9th and 10th centuries. After the Bohemian Reformation, most Czechs became followers of Jan Hus, Petr Chelčický and other regional Protestant Reformers. After the Reformation, some of the Bohemians went with the teachings of Martin Luther, especially Sudeten Germans. In the wake of the Reformation, Utraquist Hussites took a renewed increasingly anti-Catholic stance, while some of the defeated Hussite factions were revived. After the Habsburgs regained control of Bohemia, the whole population was forcibly converted to Roman Catholicism – even the Utraquist Hussites. Going forward, Czechs have become more wary and pessimistic of religion. A long history of resistance to the Catholic Church followed. It suffered a schism with the neo-Hussite Czechoslovak Hussite Church in 1920, lost the bulk of its adherents during the Communist era and continues to lose in the modern, ongoing secularization. Protestantism never recovered after the Counter-Reformation was introduced by the Austrian Habsburgs in 1620.
According to the 2011 census (an old census and the facts don’t support the 75% – 79% non-believers information above), 34% of the population stated they had no religion, 10.3% was Roman Catholic, 0.8% was Protestant (0.5% Czech Brethren and 0.4% Hussite), and 9% followed other forms of religion. 45% of the population did not answer the question about religion. From 1991 to 2001 and further to 2011 the adherence to Roman Catholicism decreased from 39% to 27% and then to 10%; Protestantism similarly declined from 3.7% to 2% and then to 0.8%.
The above are from en.wikipedia.org. These statements have not been fact-checked and are only used here to help us gain a better understanding of this nation.
How does one describe a nation without a desire to serve God? Regardless of how many may hold no religious belief, there are faithful Christians who need our prayers to remain steadfast in their faith in this nation.
1. Pray for the churches of the Czech Republic that they will faithfully share the Gospel.
2. Pray for the local pastors who are serving Jesus by serving others. Pray their ministry will influence their local communities and draw people to seek to learn about Jesus.
3. Pray for God to bind the enemy and break the chains of unbelief and that a spiritual awakening will sweep across this nation.
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