Czech Region

I. Core Values and Aims

The aim of the Czech region of IEF according to its constitution is to work towards achieving the visible unity of the Christian churches by means that are based on European Christian traditions.

These means are especially praying together, study, and activities that reinforce understanding and friendship among people. International IEF, with its many years of experience in Europe as a whole, is a help and inspiration to us in this, especially its emphasis on “living today the Church of tomorrow”.

Czech society is very secular: only about thirty percent of the population profess to be members of a church and the number of active Christians is even smaller. Thus the ecumenical scene is fairly small as well, with the same people appearing at different events organised by different groups.

IEF has close links with a number of other ecumenical groups and organisations, including for example the Institute of Ecumenical Studies, the Ecological Section of the Christian Academy, and the Ecumenical Forum of Christian Women.

IEF members are actively involved in these groups and in other informal and official ecumenical activities as well as in specifically IEF ones. Our IEF family gives us the strength and support to carry out these activities.

1. Worship and Spirituality

There is no specific IEF style of worship in the Czech Republic. At meetings we often have reflections based on Biblical texts and times of free prayer and intercessions. Many members take part in other ecumenical worship events.

Such worship events are for example the Lima liturgy, the World Day of Prayer, or the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. It is also important for us that we pray for each other and feel supported by the prayer of other IEF members.

2. Ecumenism, Discipleship and Theology

Sometimes we invite speakers to our meetings to talk about topics of ecumenical interest. Many of our members attend the weekend seminars held twice a year by the Institute of Ecumenical Studies on various theological themes.

We try to be obedient to the wish of Jesus Christ, “that all may be one”, and are convinced that the division of the Christian Church is scandalous and makes the proclamation of the Gospel less credible.

3. Fellowship and Friendship

We believe that true ecumenism comes from the grassroots and is based on ordinary people from different churches getting to know each other, praying and working together, and learning from each other’s traditions.

We feel that what unites us is stronger and more important than what divides us. We have our common basis in Jesus Christ and rejoice that each one of us can serve the others using the gifts that were bestowed upon us, in the way we are invited to serve.

We pray that unity in diversity will attract people and challenge them to new ways of serving the needy. People are glad if others are ready to listen to them; even if not everybody will agree on everything, they still search for ways forward together, in prayer and in other ways too.

II. History

The beginnings of the Czech region can be traced back to a group of Christians from several different denominations living in the Berounka valley near Praha. Already in Communist times they were living out ecumenism without knowing that IEF existed.

Inspired by the Protestant minister Miroslav Heryán, they met secretly every week in each other’s homes for prayer and fellowship. In some ways, this experience of ecumenism was more intense than after the fall of the Communist regime.

When new opportunities opened up and each denomination tried to undertake activities on its own, after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the Berounka valley group continued to hold monthly ecumenical seminars on various topics.

In 1992, Květa Oxley, a Czech living in Britain and a member of the British IEF region, contacted the Ursuline sisters in Praha to ask if they could find someone to go to the IEF conference in Seggau.

Jitka Hesová, as well as Helena Blaženínová and Pavel Blaženín from the Berounka valley group participated in the conference. This was the beginning of contacts with IEF and was followed by visits by IEF members to Praha.

In 1993 Helena Blaženínová went to the Salamanca conference, and in 1994 for the first time a larger group – four cars full – took part in the Durham conference. Among them were several people who went on to play a leading role in the Czechoslovak region.

These important people included Marie Albrechtová and Vladimír Albrecht, Helena Blaženínová and Pavel Blaženín, Marie Hradilková and Pavel Hradilkov, and Magdalena Mihaliková from Slovakia.

From then on people from the Czech and Slovak Republics attended international IEF conferences every year and came to discover better the values of IEF. With the help and support of the German and British regions in particular, preparations were made to establish a Czech and Slovak Region.

A regional committee was elected in 1995 with Helena Blaženínová as president, Magdalena Mihaliková as secretary, and Vladimír Albrecht as treasurer, and in 1997, after discussions with the Ecumenical Council of Churches in the Czech Republic and the Czech Bishops’ Conference, the Czech and Slovak Region was formally registered as a civic association.

In June 1997 there was a public presentation of the new region in Praha in the presence of representatives of international IEF, to which representatives of the churches and ecumenical bodies were also invited.

In 1997 the Czech and Slovak Region organised its first international meeting, a mini-conference in Slapy, not far from Praha, with about eighty participants, on the theme “Reconciliation”, to tie in with the Second European Ecumenical Assembly in Graz.

In the year 1999, as the number of Slovak members gradually increased, it was decided to divide the Czech and Slovak Region into two separate regions, the Czech Region and the Slovak Region.

In 2001 the Czech region hosted its first full international conference in Praha on the theme “Hope” for the start of the new millennium. It proved to be a popular venue, with more than three hundred seventy full participants.

There were also many Czech non-members, who attended various parts of the programme. In 2007, the international IEF celebrated its fortieth birthday with an international conference in Písek, on the theme “On the Road”.

III. Structure

The Czech Region is registered with the Ministry of the Interior as a civic association. At present it has about forty members, both ordained and laypeople, coming from six different denominations.

These are mostly the largest Czech denominations: the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren, and the Czechoslovak Hussite Church. The region elects a president, a vice-president, a secretary and a treasurer.

Structures, however, are not so important for us, perhaps because of the memory of the structures in the Communist past. Most decisions are reached based on consensus, trying to establish what the majority of people think, without ignoring minority views.

IV. Activities

At the beginning of each year we hold our annual general assembly in accordance with our constitution, in which we approve reports, elect new officers when the mandate of the previous ones has expired, and make plans for the coming year.

Many of our members are actively involved in a variety of ecumenical initiatives, including the weeks of prayer for Christian unity, the World Day of Prayer, the commissions of the Ecumenical Council of Churches in the Czech Republic.

Also, the prayer service for Christian unity and the service of thanksgiving for nature held by the Ecological Section of the Christian Academy, the Lima liturgies held in the Vinohrady district of Praha.

We participate also with the Ecumenical Forum of Christian Women, the community of Mothers’ Prayers in Brno, the Ecumenical Encounters between the Bible and Art, the Ecumenical Academy, the Institute for Ecumenical Studies, and many others.

The main regular and specifically IEF activities are the so-called “ecumenical goulashes”, which take place about once a month, usually at the Blaženín family home in Všenory just outside Praha.

Everybody brings a culinary contribution in the form of a goulash they have made at home, and all the goulashes are then mixed together, to form a unique and delicious soup, the “ecumenical goulash”.

It symbolises how each individual and each Christian denomination has its own special “flavour” to contribute to the ecumenical whole. It also reflects the practice recorded in the seventh-century Ordo Romanus Primus, when the deacons collected wine from the congregation, which was then mixed together for use in the Eucharist.

Sometimes we invite people to speak to us on different topics, but the “ecumenical goulashes” are above all a time of fellowship, where we draw strength for our other ecumenical activities, make future plans, and share different news from international IEF and from other ecumenical events.

V. Hopes and Visions

We hope that IEF will continue to strive to “live today the Church of tomorrow”, rather than simply trying to copy other official ecumenical organisations. We are much freer to act spontaneously and imaginatively, because our members are individuals and not churches or delegates of churches.

One expression of this should be joint Eucharistic celebrations including Eucharistic hospitality. This is not an attempt to rebel or to enforce anything on anybody, but simply the expression of our conviction that it is our common Lord, Who invites us to the Eucharistic table.

It also expresses that the Eucharist is not the icing on the cake of unity that has already been achieved, but rather that through the Eucharist the Lord strengthens us in our endeavours to achieve unity.

It also shows that our celebration together is a sign that we receive unity (though still imperfect) as a gift from God. On our regional banner we have an open Lord’s Table as an invitation to share in God’s gifts together.

We hope that the younger ecumenical generation of our members, who today are concerned mainly with looking after their children, will in the near future again have more time and energy for IEF.

Encounters on a personal level are in some ways more enriching than the big international conferences, where people do not always have so much time for each other. Perhaps in the future it would be good to have smaller, local meetings.

If the unity of God’s love between people and churches is lived out more than it is discussed, it is a visible sign of the “invisible one” amongst us, of God’s presence, which we can share in many different ways, and thus win more people to go forward with us along the road that God accompanies us on.