Social Engineering and Alienation between East and West: Czech Christian-Marxist Dialogue in the 1960s from the National Level to the Global Arena
Abstract
My analysis will begin at the national level and in the first part will examine the so-called "executive phase" of one particular campaign of anti-religious offensive: it is an example of social planning in practice where the actors themselves (in this case communist apparatchiks) used the then trendy P-word. Their effort in the mid-1950s had the objective of limiting the social influence of institutionalized religion in the public realm and hastening development towards a "communist society" in a "scientifically controlled" way.
I will then reconstruct the process by which a Czech Christian-Marxist space of exchange (a "channel") was created, which appeared, in part, in reaction to this campaign. In fact, certain planners of atheization campaigns became progressively disenchanted with "administrative" anti-church measures, began to reflect upon the shortcomings of their own social-engineering practices and finally (at least some of them) opened themselves to inspiring debates with their former principal ideological adversaries (Christian theologians).
In its third part, the chapter will explore the internationalization of this channel of interaction during the 1960s, taking into account the different motivations of the main Czech and Western actors, as well as the inner dynamics of one international organization, the World Council of Churches (WCC), which was struggling for relevance in a secularizing world.