Turning Prayers into Protests

Turning Prayers into Protests is comparative study of grass-roots religious activity in Slovakia and East Germany prior to 1989. Religion was a central arena for culture, thought, social organization, kinship and ritual in the societies that became communist after the Second World War. It was thus a primary concern for communist regimes. The author examines the ways in which these regimes targeted religion and the various and divergent roles of the Catholic Church in Slovakia and the Lutheran Church in East Germany in the response to state socialist rule and its eventual dismantling. He compares the two cases in terms of the political power, influence and affect that these Churches had in regard to state repression or cooptation, vividly demonstrating that religion could provide a space for independence beyond state control as well as a foundation for resistance.