Joint Czech-American theological seminar

Students from Columbia Theological Seminary visit Prague and take part in seminar with Czech students

The Protestant Theological Seminary in Prague (PTF) has a relationship with Columbia Theological Seminary (CTS) in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, going back nearly 20 years. During that time a number of students and teaching staff from both sides have spent a year or a semester at the partner institution. A tradition of the relationship is a visit by a small group of students from CTS to the Czech Republic and Hungary each year. The trip is part of their studies and during it they explore the life of the church in a different context to their own.

The programme organised by the PTF for their visitors in January 2014 was mostly similar to previous years, including visits to the PTF and the headquarters and congregations of the ECCB, sightseeing in Prague, attending a church service, a trip to the former concentration camp in Terezín, and a trip to Southern Bohemia to see the historical town of Telč and Protestant churches from the Toleration period of Czech history. In addition, however, this year's programme featured a new element. As part of the preparation for the trip, the CTS students read the book "The End of Memory", by the Croatian-American theologian Miroslav Volf. In Prague they then met a group of Czech students and teachers from the PTF who had also read the book in advance. The resulting seminar gave them all an opportunity to present and exchange their ideas about the book and thus added an extra, specifically theological dimension to the trip. Everyone agreed that the seminar had been a success and it is hoped to repeat it when the next group from CTS comes to Prague in May 2015.