Underground Church

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Underground churches are Christian communities that gather secretly and in private homes for religious services and meetings due to state or spiritual repression and persecution.

Crypto-Christianity (“hidden Christianity”) refers to the hidden practice of the Christian faith in a simultaneous public commitment to another religion. Crypto-Christians (“hidden Christians”) are people who follow Christian customs and traditions even though they formally belong to another faith community.

Early Christianity was an underground church at the time of its persecution by the Romans. The French Huguenots and the Bohemian brothers organized themselves in secret after the beginning of the persecutions, thus underground.

Delimitation

“Cryptoconfessions” such as crypto-Calvinism, crypto-Catholicism and crypto-Protestantism were the practice of Christian rites that actually contradicted the (Christian) national denomination and were therefore concealed or disguised as sufficiently the national denomination. Such circumstances were in the foreground, for example, between confessionalization and the Church of England. From the 16th to the late 18. In Ireland, public worship and all historic church buildings were reserved for the Anglican Church of Ireland. Thus Catholicism was practiced in secret.
Crypto-Jews are occasionally referred to as converts (from Judaism to another religion) who, contrary to their public religious affiliation, continue to feel connected to the old religion and secretly practice Jewish culture and religion. An example of this are so-called Marrans and their descendants.
In various Shia groups, Taqeya is a valid principle, according to which, in the event of coercion or danger to the body and property, it is permissible to disregard ritual duties and conceal one's faith.

Dissemination and history

In Islamic countries, faith communities run as underground churches can be found in small networks. In Iran, Afghanistan or Somalia, as well as especially in Saudi Arabia, they consist mostly of Christian converts from Islam, who thus cannot participate in religious services of traditional churches. In Iran, leaders and members of these house churches are regularly arrested and sentenced to prison.

Albania and Kosovo

The origin of Christianity can be traced back to the time of the apostles. With the arrival of the Ottomans, the process of Islamization in the then Christian Balkan region began in the 14th century. This process took place relatively quickly, mainly due to the legal and economic advantages of a conversion to Islam. Muslims were on an equal footing in the Ottoman Empire, while those of a different faith had to pay a sometimes high “head tax”. S