For those who are interested in the history of the “Congregation of Bohemian Freethinkers” it helps to understand the cultural background of the founder, Frantisek Zdrubek, as a Bohemian-American apostate priest who fought for separation of church and state, valued freethought, and promoted science.
1874 National Freethinkers Party role in Czechoslovakia
The Young Czech Party (National Freethinkers Party, Národní strana svobodomyslná) was formed in the Bohemian crown land of Austria-Hungary in 1874. It initiated the democratization of Czech political parties and led to the establishment of the political base of Czechoslovakia.
“In reaction to an Old Czech elite that cultivated the Bohemian nobility, the Catholic hierarchy and the kingdom’s history, the Young Czechs embraced liberalism, capitalism and rationalism, and they staked the legitimacy of Czech nationalism on business, professional, technical, scholarly and cultural prowess.”
“They also cultivated a populist nationalism that was quite beyond the more deferential and elitist style of the Old Czechs and that first culminated in the tábory (mass rallies at historical sites) and student activism of the 1868-1871 Bohemian state rights struggle.”
“At the beginning of the Habsburg constitutional era in the 1860s the Young Czechs were also preoccupied with emancipating the kingdom’s schools from the Catholic Church and grounding them in rationalism, and when they formally constituted themselves in 1874, they did so as the Národní strana svobodomyslná, or National Freethinker Party. “
Quotes from David Zdenek Chroust in May 2009 (details below).
1892 Bohemian American National Committee
In America, many Bohemian/Czech organizations and publications also embraced Freethinking.
“In September 1892 a group in the American Midwest that called itself the Bohemian American National Committee (BANC) began publishing a monthly journal, The Bohemian Voice, to [1] influence American public opinion on the “Bohemians” as a Slavic immigrant ethnic group, [2] to counter the perceived influence of German sources on American perceptions of ethnic conflict in the Habsburg Empire and its Czech-speaking crown lands, and [3] to foster a Bohemian identity among the children of Bohemian immigrants. The journal was one part of a broad agenda of efforts devoted to these three goals, but it was the most striking part and greatest success of that ambitious agenda. For over two years The Bohemian Voice and its young immigrant editors and Michigan-educated attorneys, Thomas Čapek (1861-1950) and Josef Jiří Král (1870-1951), parried American nativists and Habsburg authority on behalf of the Bohemian immigrant ethnic group, other Slavs in America, and the Czech-speaking majority in Bohemia and Moravia and its struggle for “home rule.”
Source: BOHEMIAN VOICE: CONTENTION, BROTHERHOOD AND JOURNALISM AMONG CZECH PEOPLE IN AMERICA, 1860-1910. A Dissertation by DAVID ZDENEK CHROUST. Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, May 2009