How do the Czech and Slovak churches think about the future? How do they farm, invest and manage their land? How do they see their role in society? The answers to these questions are offered by a collective monograph of anthropologists, sociologists and economists on the changes of churches in the Czech Republic and Slovakia in the context of restitution. Eight chapters cover the developments in three denominations - the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren / Evangelical Church of Augsburg and the Baptist Brethren Union.
The focus of the book is on the anthropological chapters depicting the changes in the church life inside and outside. The research into the position of churches in today's Czech and Slovak society took the author's team to schools and forests, to press conferences and to almost demolished churches; to people from Jasov through Gemer, Zamagur, Orava and Vysočina to Prague and Plzeň.
For a better understanding of the topic, the book includes chapters summarizing the changes in legal norms concerning churches and religious societies and their financing in Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and chapters depicting the development of media debates on churches, restitution and the separation of churches from the state.
The book presents the churches in their rarely portrayed plurality and in the diversity of questions they ask themselves in their search for meaningful ways forward, and shows them rethinking their mission or learning new things, such as sustainable agriculture or investing in financial instruments.