Zoom-Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87247006745?pwd=TUkzNDQ5VFBoRVFYMFVqT3VialN4UT09 (Meeting-ID: 872 4700 6745; Kenncode: 459843)
Im Falle eines Besuchs der Veranstaltung im Collegium Carolinum wird um Anmeldung gebeten: Judith.Brehmer@collegium-carolinum.de
Zdeněk Nešpor will introduce his recent research on history of the Czechoslovak (Hussite) Church and outline its wider context. The Czechoslovak church has been the only national/independent Catholic church worldwide that gained significant influence, and was the second largest Czech (even Czechoslovak) church for most of the 20th century. Despite the uniqueness and its social impact, however, it had not been very lucky with its historians, and the church’s centenary (2020) is a good reason for reparation. This research ought to be based on a perspective “from below”, starting at the level of particular congregations and regional contexts, which often call into question a number of general statements and common clichés. An important “mid-step” of such research is an encyclopedia of (histories of) particular congregations, summarizing church topography and sociology, and at the same time providing material for further social scientific analyses. However, it is not the encyclopedia’s only purpose. The Encyclopedia of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church (2022) follows on the Encyclopedia of Established Protestant Churches (2009) and the Encyclopedia of Smaller Christian Denominations (2015) and, together with the older religious-historical topography of the Roman Catholic Church, completes the historico-sociological “mapping” of Christendom in Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia. Now it “remains” to continue with Jewish qahals and other non-Christian communities, including those established within modern migrations.
Zdeněk R. Nešpor is a historian and a sociologist, professor at the Charles University and a senior researcher at the Czech Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Sociology. He is a regular fellow of the Learned Society of the Czech Republic since 2022. Currently he is a fellow of the Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe (KFG) "Universalism and Particularism in European Contemporary History" at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.