The Religious Life of the Industrial Working Class in the Czech Lands?

Abstract

The article focuses on the role of religion among working-class inhabitants of two industrial towns in the Czech lands, Ostrava and Kladno, during the first half of twentieth century. It analyses the enormous conversion movement, the position of new actors of religious life, and the religious behavior of workers. Looking at the history of the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, the study understands religion as one of the constituent factors of society and its historic change. Traditional, new, and nonconformist religious actors appear as active agents in the private and public life of industrial towns. They mobilized workers, young people, and women, and they produced the major arena in which social, cultural, and church history come together.