Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Any researcher addressing the issue of the development of Protestantism in Eastern Europe is faced with at least two difficulties. The first is to define ‘Eastern Europe’ and the second is to decide how Protestantism is to be understood. The area that is called Eastern Europe in geopolitical terms today has quite a complex historical development and this is reflected in its Protestant history and development. In the context of Protestantism, the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had long-standing cultural and religious contacts with the Nordic countries, specifically Sweden. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Baltic region also experienced the robust presence of both Prussia and imperial Russia. The traditional Central-Eastern European peoples of present-day Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, the Transylvanian area of Romania, Croatia, and Slovenia are part of Western European development as dominated by the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its history. Roman Catholicism and its opposition are dominant themes here. The cultural and religious life of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Bessarabia, and the Caucasian peoples in the last two centuries has been inseparably tied to the historical development of Russia. Part of this history is the interaction with the Orthodox Church. Finally, Protestantism in the so-called Balkan states of Romania, Bulgaria, Bosnia ... log in or subscribe to read full text