Dominant Catholicism in Slovak history
For emancipation purposes, Prince Rastislav I invited the Greek Christian missionaries Cyril and Methodius to Christianize his kingdom of Great Moravia, which in the 9th century included Slovakia. Cyril created the first Slavic alphabet, Glagolitic, and did a great deal of work in translating liturgical texts into Old Slavic, which became the third religious language in Europe.
After the destruction of Great Moravia by the Magyars, Slovakia was integrated into the kingdom of Hungary until the First World War. The Catholic rites were imposed through the Hungarian kings who had been converted very early on. The schism between Church of the East and Church of the West in 1054 definitively separated Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Orthodoxy never succeeded in penetrating the kingdom of Hungary, whose kings were always crowned according to Catholic rites.
It was in the 16th century that Catholicism, well established in the new Austro-Hungarian state, first came under threat. The Reformation from Germany was introduced under the influence of the Hungarian princes of Transylvania. This movement was not only religious, but also social and political, directed against the government and the Catholic Church. Protestantism conquered the townspeople, as it allowed them to challenge the domination of the Church and the nobility. The nobility finally joined the Reformation, because it gave a spiritual dimension to their numerous revolts against the despotic power of the Habsburgs. The peasants expected this to improve their lot. The Reformation spread throughout Slovakia in its evangelical version during the 16th century.
In the second part of the 16th century, the Catholic Church and Vienna began to fight Protestantism with great fervour. The Counter-Reformation was led by the Jesuits. The process of recatholicisation, which consisted in systematically favouring Catholics, was not completed until the end of the 18th century. It was in this context that Emperor Leopold I promulgated a law concerning the construction of "articulated" churches. Evangelical Protestants had the right to build two wooden churches in each of the eight Slovak districts. However, these churches in the shape of a Greek cross were to be built of wood, at the edge of the villages, without bell towers, without a single nail, with a side main entrance door, and above all in less than a year. Today these buildings are gems of Slovak folk architecture.The influence of the communist period
During the communist interlude (1948-1989) religious practices, described as "the opium of the people", were simply prohibited and the Church was expropriated of her property. After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992, the Slovak Republic quickly set about restoring Church property. This process lasted about twenty years and led to a rather unprecedented situation. The state, which is officially neutral from a confessional point of view, in reality bears the personnel and management costs of all official places of worship. In practice, therefore, the Church is not completely separate from the State and discussions on this subject are blocked by the Catholic Church, which considers that it has not recovered all its assets, in particular the agricultural land around the religious buildings. Nothing is moving on this issue, and this lack of political will to change things is justified by the affirmation of the Christian character of Slovak society, which since the fall of the Communist regime is once again playing an important role in people's lives.
The place of other religions
Slovakia is a resolutely Roman Catholic country at 62%. In terms of other faiths, there are only a few Protestants left in Slovakia today. They are Evangelists of the Augsburg Confession or Calvinist Reformists and represent about 6 to 10% of the population. They are mainly concentrated in central Slovakia.
The United Church concerns the Ruthenians, an ethnic minority in the east of the country whose language is close to Ukrainian. Unlike their Ukrainian Orthodox neighbours, they are Catholic and recognise the authority of the Pope. Their rites nevertheless retain Orthodox specificities: baptism by immersion, marriage of priests (provided they are married before being ordained) or iconostasis in churches. They are also called Greek-Catholics. Maronite Christians and Coptic Catholics are also Uniate.
The Jewish community, of which 60,000 members were deported to the Nazi concentration camps, today has only a few thousand faithful. Their former synagogues can be admired in some cities.Islam does not have the status of an official religion
Between 2,000 and 5,000 Muslims live in the country. This community therefore does not have the numbers necessary to be officially recognized and to benefit from State subsidies for places of worship, schools and education. This poses major difficulties for this religion, which is not allowed to have official imams and whose funerals and marriages are considered illegitimate. The situation had taken a political turn with the wave of migrants in 2015. In August, Prime Minister Robert Fico announced that his country would only offer asylum to Christian refugees, citing "security reasons", while the Interior Minister stressed the "absence of mosques" to justify the policy of not accepting Muslims. Openly anti-Muslim, the Slovak Nationalist Party (SNS) and its leader Andrej Danko, president of the Slovak Parliament between 2016 and 2020, said: "Islamisation begins with the kebabs and in Bratislava it has already begun. So understand what it could be like in five to ten years. "The tone is set and at the end of 2016 he proposed a law that would make it difficult for the Muslim community to obtain official status. Passed by Parliament, the law required a religion to have 50,000 followers in order to be recognized. Then President Andrej Kiska immediately took responsibility and vetoed the "discriminatory" law. The situation is tense for this minority which represents only 0.1% of the population.
Slovakia is a country with little secularization
Slovak religiosity remains quite strong. More than three-quarters declare themselves to be believers, and among believers, 55% are practising. Churches are often full and attended by young people.
In particular, the sense of belonging to the Catholic Church is high. There is little room for other religions, especially since the Catholic Church can sometimes be instrumentalized by some nationalists in a young nation in the process of building its identity.
