How did Commmnist countries have so many self-described Christians (war, Roman, influence)

[GSPNative]

In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, many countries have very high percentages of Christians, and the percentage of their population that was Christian was even higher soon after Communism ended in 1989/1990. For example, Romania has a very high percentage of Christians. (East Germany and Czechoslovakia are the exceptions.)

During the Communist period, was church attendance high, and did large numbers of people self-identify as Christian? Or did few people actually attend church, out of fear of persecution, but self-identify as Christians in opposition to governmental repression? And did church attendance increase once Communism ended?

I know that religious practice is declining throughout Europe (and the US) now.

Thanks.

[Ruth4Truth]

These are very good questions, OP. First off, I've never bought the idea that Romania had a lot of latent Christians hiding out, waiting for regime change. The villages did, and some people attended, but it was nearly all people of pensioner age. I find it hard to believe, that suddenly everyone either came out of the woodwork after Ceausescu, or suddenly "saw the light". But supposedly polls have been taken, and show that the vast majority in the country are believers. I don't think that many are. I think some are voting "yes" simply because they identify with Christian culture generally. But that doesn't mean they believe in Jesus, which is the mark of a Christian.

Most people born during the USSR in Russia believed the anti-religious propaganda (and many still do). Many churches were closed, but the few that were open attracted mostly pensioners. After those born and raised before the USSR passed away, there were relatively few Orthodox believers left, except for the communities of Old Believers, a breakaway sect from the mainstream Russian Orthodox, kind of like the Amish, that live very traditionally. Some of those communities were allowed to continue, while some emigrated to the US. Another sect, the Dukhobors, emigrated to Canada.

There were also Protestant sects that were persecuted by the Sov. regime. The Pentacostals got media attention in the West for their troubles, and the US Embassy gave them refugee status, though many remained. Technically, people were allowed to pursue their faith privately and in the few churches that were open, but proselytizing would get people into trouble. Some Protestant traditions were driven underground.

I think some Russians identify with the Orthodox Church as a national symbol, but it doesn't mean they're all believers. Some people take pride in the fact that new churches are being built and old ones--refurbished, but they don't attend church or have an icon in the home. But there does seem to be a genuine resurgence of Orthodox believers. There's also been a resurgence of Buddhist believers, including some Russians.


Here's Wiki on religion in the USSR, for a different view than mine on how many believers there were during that regime. I still think a majority of Russians were atheistic. It's hard to say how many kept their beliefs to themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religi...e_Soviet_Union

[Ralph_Kirk]

Originally Posted by GSPNative

In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, many countries have very high percentages of Christians, and the percentage of their population that was Christian was even higher soon after Communism ended in 1989/1990. For example, Romania has a very high percentage of Christians. (East Germany and Czechoslovakia are the exceptions.)

During the Communist period, was church attendance high, and did large numbers of people self-identify as Christian? Or did few people actually attend church, out of fear of persecution, but self-identify as Christians in opposition to governmental repression? And did church attendance increase once Communism ended?

I know that religious practice is declining throughout Europe (and the US) now.

Thanks.

The Russian Orthodox Church had always been permitted in the USSR, although members faced more limited employment options. The same was true of the Roman Catholic in Eastern Europe. The communist governments put pressure on them, but never attempted anything like a general purge. At the same time, there were "unapproved" Christian denominations that were heavily suppressed. Soviets particularly oppressed Baptists and Pentecostals.



What's more of a miracle is the persistence of Christianity in North Korea, which did, indeed attempt to purge Christianity from the nation. What the Kim regimes did to Christians is utterly horrifying. They gave awards to prison guards who devised the most brutal tortures that did not actually kill the prisoners.


Yet, Christianity increased 10-fold in North Korea from the mid-90s to 2010. Kim Jong Un appears to have abandoned trying to wipe out Christianity and has created the North Korean Orthodox Church to attempt to co-opt them.

[Unsettomati]

Originally Posted by GSPNative

In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, many countries have very high percentages of Christians, and the percentage of their population that was Christian was even higher soon after Communism ended in 1989/1990. For example, Romania has a very high percentage of Christians. (East Germany and Czechoslovakia are the exceptions.)

During the Communist period, was church attendance high, and did large numbers of people self-identify as Christian? Or did few people actually attend church, out of fear of persecution, but self-identify as Christians in opposition to governmental repression? And did church attendance increase once Communism ended?

I know that religious practice is declining throughout Europe (and the US) now.

Thanks.

Religion in the West - with either a hands-off policy by the government (France, Canada, etc.); or with a fairly light state touch (the United Kingdom, Sweden before 2000, etc.) allowed a sort of 'free market' with regards to religion, and it has waned in those places.*

Under communism in the East, the forced restrictions on religion (which varied as convenient - for example, Stalin harshly repressed all religions until 1941, when he saw religion as a useful patriotic component of resisting the Nazis; there was a partial resumption of control after 1945, and then Khrushchev accelerated it when initiating an anti-religion campaign that was less violent than under Stalin but still pervasive, and which continued until the 1980s) created in faith something that was forbidden and was thus to be sought out and explored, as often happens with prohibitions. This is, of course, the opposite of what the communists expected (as Princess Leia once said: "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.").

There's also the fact that faith tends to correlate positively with suffering and negatively correlate with prosperity. So living under the yoke of authoritarian oppression, not being allowed to emigrate or read what you want to read, and living in relative impoverishment, tended to foster a seeking for hope more so than in the liberal democracies of the West.

Finally, if one maps pre-World War II literacy rates in Europe with modern rates of irreligion in the same area, the maps highly correlate. Literacy is the key to accessing information, and the more information a person has, the less likely is that person to be religious.

*Of course, the United States is an exception to this trend. This is nothing new - it fascinated Tocqueville. The reasons offered for this are varied.

[farm108]

Originally Posted by GSPNative

During the Communist period, was church attendance high, and did large numbers of people self-identify as Christian? Or did few people actually attend church, out of fear of persecution, but self-identify as Christians in opposition to governmental repression? And did church attendance increase once Communism ended?

I know that religious practice is declining throughout Europe (and the US) now.

Thanks.

During Communism church attendance was not high. Many would get married at home, the priest would come in private and perform the ceremony in front of the family. Yes, there was some fear of persecution. Remember, communists were against God, there is no God in Communism. Many churches were demolished or new construction (tall apartment blocks) were built to block the old churches. Monasteries were closed and monks and nuns were forced to go back to their families. Many protested and so they were sent to working camps, prisons etc.

Yes, church attendance increased after the fall of Communism. My parents for instance were not particularly religious. And now they go to church once a week and follow all the fasting days (about 180 days/year). Mom is more serious about it, dad a little less. Both have high IQ (PhD). They've been through a lot, lots of suffering. Developing a relationship with God was a gradual process for them. It helps them now, I'm certain of it.

[recycled]

Church attendance in the eastern part of Germany (former communist East Germany) is pretty low except for a few spikes around Christmas and Easter. On average, less than 25 percent are a church member (mostly Evangelical Protestant) and less than half of those church members attend church on a regular basis - a bit higher in rural areas, lower in cities. Very few of my neighbors, almost all of whom lived much of their younger years under communism, attend church or belong to a religion. Sort of ironic considering this is the home turf of Martin Luther and Thomas Muenzer, who led the reformation in the 16th century.

There aren't many other Americans that I run across here in Chemnitz. There are a few young Mormon missionaries from Utah that I see in town once in awhile. They wear their iconic white dress shirts, black tie and Elder nametags. I often stop and chat with them. They tell me that since there are so few people that belong to other churches here, it is actually easier for them to attract new members to Mormonism because they don't have to compete with someone's existing ties to another church.

[Veritas Vincit]

I think in quite a few countries the local religion became part of a national counter-identity to the official communist-based state identity. One has to recall that state doctrine did not just preach communism, but loyalty to the Soviet Union i.e. Russia, a foreign country many had at best ambivalent but often negative feelings about. People thus tried to find refuge and solace in their country's national culture that existed prior to the communist takeover. Identifying as a member of the national religion was part of that symbolic stance.

This did not happen in East Germany for a number of reasons. While there was church-based opposition to the regime, it was never a mass movement and atheism was instead pervasive in the population. I believe a big part of this is that Germany - being religiously divided almost 50-50 between Catholics and protestants - had already built a very secularized national identity and culture from the 19th century onward. Being the Western-most part of the Soviet Bloc there was also far more Western influence here. People could fairly easily consume Western media and pop culture in their own language which means all the social trends happening in the West from the 1950s through the 1980s also made it there in near 'real time'. It's thus perhaps not surprising that organized opposition to the state's communist doctrine was not rooted in traditional nationalism - which had become extremely unfashionable in Western Europe - but instead in what was fashionable in West Germany i.e. various forms of liberalism and even "New Left" thinking which of course also incorporated the move away from religion in general. In other words, East Germans could be atheist and opposed to the communist rulers at the same time without feeling any sense of contradiction.

[NJ Brazen_3133]

Communism invented in the White Christian world by a Jewish person, and a Christian (Friedrich Engels; never gets credit). That is why. It was not created by a Muslim, or a Buddhist.

[recycled]

Originally Posted by NJ Brazen_3133

Communism invented in the White Christian world by a Jewish person, and a Christian (Friedrich Engels; never gets credit). That is why. It was not created by a Muslim, or a Buddhist.

Engels still lingers in communist history in eastern Germany. There is still a Friederich-Engels-Strasse in almost every city (and many towns) in the former East Germany, in fact I know a lady who lives on such a street. No shortage of Karl-Marx-Strasse either, along with Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and Ernst Thaelmann. Here in Chemnitz, there is still a famous monument to Karl Marx, built in the communist era when Chemnitz was called Karl Marx Stadt (1952-1990).

[arr430]

I'm inclined to think the change reflects the extent to which the church was depended on for social activity and spiritual guidance. The people continued to embrace the same belief systems, but changed their outward relationship with the church as an institution.

BTW, a similar reversion is taking place within Islam in Central Asia.