Czechoslovak Hussite Church

Czechland has its own church.  The Czechoslovak Hussite Church (CČSH) is a Christian church that split away from the Roman Catholic Church and was established in 1920 following the end of WWI and creation of Czechoslovakia.

It started out as the Czechoslovak Church but in 1972, the name was changed to to emphasise the values of Jan Hus, the former Catholic priest who was burned at the stake in 1415, and creator of the Czech alphabet.  I understand the church is a sort of Presbyterian and Episcopal mixture.  

The most recent census results showed that there are less than 25.000 members of the church.  In Czechland the church has 304 congregations that are divided in to five dioceses - Prague, Plzeň, Brno, Olomouc, and Hradec Králové.  There are three congregations in the Bratislava Diocese in Slovakia.

The head of the church is called 'Patriarch' and clergy can be men or women.  More than half of the priests are women.  Future priests undergo training at the Hussite Faculty of Theology at Charles University.

Husův sbor, the Hussite Church building, at Botanická, is one of the first functionalist church buildings in Central Europe.  It is the oldest functionalist building in Brno and this year celebrates 93 years.

Yesterday, Kája and I went to attend an afternoon Christmas concert.  The concert was nice but I have to admit that I didn't understand everything.  

There were a lot of Czech Christmas songs that I'd never heard before.  The traditional English-language Christmas songs that I know, were sung in Czech.