Imprisoned for Christ: an Analysis of a Pentecostal Clergyman's Memories of Jail in Czechoslovakia During the Normalization Period
Abstract
From the beginning of the 1960s until the registration of the church in January 1989, Pentecostal Christians in Czechoslovakia acted as semi-official congregations, seeking state approval to operate. In 1983, several leaders of Pentecostal communities were convicted of "obstruction of the state supervision of the church", including church spokesman Rudolf Bubik (1941-2016).
During his two-month stay in custody, Bubik wrote down notes which subsequently became the basis for the book Deník z vězení aneb Šedesát dnů pro Krista ("A Prison Diary or Sixty Days for Christ"). The subject of the presented study is a discursive analysis of the prisoner's memories, as for the transcendent phenomena the author is methodologically based on Latour's symmetrical approach and Bialecki's critique of methodological atheism.
The analysis of the narrative used in the clergyman's memories of clashes with state officials provides valuable information about the phenomenon of Pentecostal Christianity in Czechoslovakia during the period of normalization.