[jhbadger]

Yeah, it was originally a religious thing. It's why Croats use the Latin alphabet and Serbs Cyrillic to write essentially the same language -- because Croats tended to be Catholic and Serbs tended to be Orthodox. Czechs and Poles use the Latin alphabet too because likewise they are Catholics for the most part.

[acqq]

According to Wikipedia, the majority of Czechs are atheists. Only 10% are Catholics (1) and there is a reason for that:

"Ever since the 1620 Battle of White Mountain, the Czech people have been historically characterised as "tolerant and even indifferent towards religion"."

"Pew Research Center found in 2015 that 72% of the population of Czech Republic declared to be irreligious"

Also (2):

"With the fall of the Habsburgs in 1918, more than a million Czechs (including 300 priests) left the Roman Catholic Church. Most chose not to affiliate with another church."

Why such a reaction? In (1) we read how the Catholic Church and the rulers behaved before, under the Habsburgs control:

"the whole population was forcibly converted to Roman Catholicism—even the Utraquist Hussites. All kinds of Protestant communities including the various branches of Hussites, Lutherans and Reformed were either expelled, killed, or converted to Roman Catholicism."

Also (3)

"Royal decrees pertaining to religion granted Protestant lords, knights, and burghers the right to choose either conversion or emigration. Only about one-quarter of the noble families living in Bohemia and Moravia prior to 1620 remained"

"The emigrations devastated Bohemia and Moravia, which may have lost as much as one-half of their population."

Then in 1781 Joseph II "abolished restrictions on the personal freedom (serfdom) of the peasants, and he granted religious toleration."

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Czech_Republic

2) https://fee.org/articles/how-state-religion-made-the-czechs-...

3) https://www.britannica.com/topic/Czechoslovak-history/The-Co...

[emmelaich]

Good links! Yet I would think that Catholicism was still the main determinant of language.

[keiferski]

Those are all correct links, but the current atheism in the Czech Republic is mostly due to communism. You can observe a similar effect in Albania.

[acqq]

I believe that can't explain the difference in the religious feelings in Poland and Czechia, both being in the same block during the same time after the WW II? I'd say Albania is not comparable, having completely different historical and cultural background and also the political separation from the block during the same years under much more extreme regime.

[keiferski]

It's an immensely complex situation and I can't explain it all in a HN comment, but the importance of the Catholic Church in contemporary Polish culture goes back to at least 1772, when the Partitions began. Czechs didn't have this same experience and were more "integrated" into Germanic and Habsburg Europe, Czechia wasn't completely razed during WW2, and the Soviets were, shall we say, less harsh on them than on the Poles.

In short, communism simultaneously increased Czech tradition religious apatheticism and Polish Catholicism.

[acqq]

> the importance of the Catholic Church in contemporary Polish culture goes back to at least 1772, when the Partitions began.

And the serious distancing from the same church by Czechs goes back even to centuries before that, as I've quoted before. Also note how Joseph II helped there only 9 years after that 1772 you mention.

[acqq]

Also, Albania seems to be much more religious, even 9 years ago, when the effect of the previous regime could have been a bit more strong than today:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albania#Religion