{"id":1145,"date":"2005-10-13T14:07:32","date_gmt":"2005-10-13T14:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/christians-in-eastern-europe.html"},"modified":"2005-10-13T14:07:32","modified_gmt":"2005-10-13T14:07:32","slug":"christians-in-eastern-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/10\/christians-in-eastern-europe.html","title":{"rendered":"Christians in Eastern Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

A long, interesting Christianity Today piece, that, in places, seems to crack the "evangelicals bringing Christ to, er, Catholics" template<\/a> just a teeny tiny bit.<\/p>\n

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By 2000, it was clear that the church boom had failed to arrive as some expected. Religion journalist Jonathan Luxmoore, whose research we’re using throughout this article, reported in the Religion, State, and Society<\/span> journal that church attendance in the region saw a 15 percent drop during the last decade. Wladyslaw Dwulat, general secretary of the Evangelical Alliance in Poland, sums up the post-communist years this way: "It’s not the growth we had prayed for."<\/p>\n

It’s a sobering story, but it’s not the only one. Like the mustard seed of Jesus’ parable, a small section of the church here is growing against the odds. While most established churches see only a steady decline, evangelical congregations have grown in every country in the region. This is all the more remarkable when you consider how different these countries are. We take a look at two: the Czech Republic, one of the most secular in the world, and Poland, one of the most religious. In both, evangelicals are the only group that, though small, is gaining members.<\/p>\n

[snip]<\/em><\/p>\n

This respect for Christianity becomes visible at summer English camps. Unlike their Czech counterparts, the Poles "know everything about Christianity," says Dana Kotasova, who has worked for eight years at camps on both sides of the border. They know most of the "right answers," but few have a deep relationship with Christ. Camp counselors present the gospel in a fresh way and work to disciple the kids. Many students have begun their own relationship with Christ because of these camps. Among them is Christianity Today<\/span>‘s own associate editor Agnieszka Tennant, who described her experience in the December 2002 article "The Ultimate Language Lesson<\/a>".<\/p>\n

When these camp attendees return home, they do not all leave their churches to follow Christ. The Catholic Church in Poland has seen a substantial evangelical renewal, while almost two-thirds of Protestants are involved in the more mainline congregations. This leads Wladyslaw Dwulat, secretary general of the Evangelical Alliance in Poland, to say that "we prefer to be called evangelicals" rather than Protestants or Catholics.<\/p>\n

Under communism, ecumenical relationships between the tiny evangelical minority and the Catholic Church were nearly nonexistent. The Catholics commonly referred to evangelicals as cult members, confusing them with Jehovah’s Witnesses. But times have changed, and evangelicals from both Protestant and Catholic churches now work together with increasing frequency.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A long, interesting Christianity Today piece, that, in places, seems to crack the "evangelicals bringing Christ to, er, Catholics" template just a teeny tiny bit. By 2000, it was clear that the church boom had failed to arrive as some expected. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}