Turning Prayers into Protests : Religious-Based Activism and Its Challenge to State Power in Socialist Slovakia and East Germany

Turning Prayers into Protests is a comparative study of grass-roots religious activity in Slovakia and East Germany prior to 1989. Religion was a long-standing arena of culture, thought, social organization, kinship and ritual in the societies in which communism took hold after the Second World War and it was a primary target for most of the regimes in the region. The author examines the different ways in which religion was targeted by the regimes and the various and divergent roles that the Catholic Church in Slovakia and the Lutheran Church in East Germany played in the social response to and the eventual dismantling of state socialist rule. He compares these cases in terms of the political power, influence and affect that these movements had vis- -vis state repression and/or cooptation, vividly showing the history of how religion provided both a space for carving an independent area of life beyond state control and a foundation upon which to stand against the state in defiance. Turning Prayers into Protests is comparative study of religious-based oppositional activity in Slovakia and East Germany prior to 1989. Religion was a central arena for culture, thought, social organization, in the societies that became communist after the Second World War. It was thus a primary concern for communist regimes. The author examines the various and divergent grass-roots activism of the secret Catholic Church in Slovakia and the Lutheran Church in East Germany that confronted state socialist rule and contributed to 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. Book jacket

Turning Prayers into Protests is a comparative study of religious-based oppositional activity in Slovakia and East Germany prior to 1989.