Greetings, viewers! This is Ethan Watson and Duncan Winburn. It is Day 6 in Czechia, and today was all about Bethlehem Chapel.

While we were at the Chapel, our CEA guide, Kris, translated stories about Jan Hus and Jan Žižka. Jan Hus was the original Czech protestant, and he began preaching to lower-class citizens. He believed that it was necessary to preach to all for the sake of education. He preached from a low height in his church because it made him closer to his congregation. They were all standing inside of the church, and he could see them well because he was at a low height. Jan Hus appealed his ideals directly to the highest Christian authority, Christ himself, therefore bypassing the laws and structures of the medieval church. The government burned him at the stake for such teachings. He was one of the main proponents of the schism away from the Catholic Church, and the primary influence of the very famous Martin Luther. Martin Luther created the Protestant Reformation in 1517.

Meanwhile, Jan Žižka was a war hero who fought for the Hussites. The Hussites were some of the first Protestants. Žižka taught a group of peasants how to fight by turning wagons into mobile forts. His eye was cut out, but he kept fighting. Then, a tree cut his other eye out, but he kept fighting still. He learned to read the land even though he was blind. He died of a plague, and our personal favorite part of his story is that he had his skin attached to a drum head so that he could continue to lead his troops into battle. 

Though both Žižka and Hus were religious figures and the Czech Republic is mostly atheistic, they are still national heroes. Czechia still has national holidays for its saints, more out of tradition than for religious reasons, much like Christmas today in some ways. It just goes to show that identities can straddle each other: Czechia is atheistic, but still shows some religious roots.

Bethlehem Chapel has components of the walls that are up to 700 years old. While renovating, people discovered writings and drawings from the original walls and have attempted to preserve them. There were many paintings on the walls, which were painted by students who were studying to become preachers themselves. The Czech Republic values preserving its identities, even if it does not align with those identities anymore.