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Often our closest connection with history is a book or an archaeological dig, but in Jan Milič Lochman we found one of Jan Hus's living heirs. Born in the Czech Republic to Protestant parents who named him after Hus's reforming predecessor, Dr. Lochman has preached in Bethlehem Chapel and lectured at Charles University. He would even call himself a Hussite, except that the term fails to encompass the whole Czech reform tradition stretching before and after Hus.

Dr. Lochman, now professor emeritus of systematic theology at the University of Basel, Switzerland, not only connects with the distant past—he has witnessed his home country's twentieth-century upheavals as well. Christian History asked him what Hus means today to the church and the people of the Czech Republic.

What aspects of today's Czech society are in some way Hus's legacy?

I could not speak of a strong, inspiring presence of the Hussite legacy in Czech society today. Certainly Hus enjoys a high status in Czech history, and a considerable majority of people consider him one of the most famous Czechs. That's true. But this is very often a vague attitude. The specific Hussite legacy, Hus's important contribution to Czech culture and spirituality, is less known.

However, even people who don't know the content of Hus's message appreciate his high authority as a witness to the dignity of human conscience, because he was one who refused to recant. And he remained faithful to what he preached under pressures and even unto death.

Did you ever experience that kind of pressure?

For the major part of history, Czech Protestants have been persecuted. But there was no persecution in my childhood—just a very deep sense of being a minority within the nation and within the world.

But then, of course, after 1948 Communists took the power. I was a young student in those days. I then became a pastor and began serving in a situation, I wouldn't say of direct persecution, but rather of being under duress. But this was not tragic for a devoted Christian, because under that particular pressure you get the chance also to appropriate your faith in a more genuine way—under the cross, in the hope of resurrection. And this was my inspiration to study theology and to teach theology.

Living in the Communist society was difficult. At the same time it was spiritually challenging, and I am grateful for that challenge.

Has a Hussite church survived to the present?

There is a small church body in the Czech Republic that calls itself explicitly "Hussite," as well as a Hussite theological faculty at Prague University. There is also a Czech Brethren Church, which came to the United States as the Moravian Church. Because of tragic developments in Czech church history, though, all Protestant churches there are small. Most Czechs are nominally Catholic or don't belong to any church. But the Protestant churches have kept their traditions and their role within the society, and that is much more important than the numbers.

How has Hus's motto, "Truth conquers," been a rallying cry for Czechs, especially in the twentieth century?

Those words were a rallying cry for Thomáš Masaryk, the founder of the first Czech Republic in 1918. He was very dedicated to the memory of Hus and decided that the Czech coat of arms should carry the words, "The truth conquers." Masaryk knew that politics is not just a power game and that politicians have responsibility with respect to the truth, which for him was the Christian truth.

So at that point the slogan became really an inspiration to the nation. Even in the Communist day, the coat of arms always carried that inscription, "The truth conquers." It was paradoxical, because the Communist system was a system of manipulated truth. Still, for everyone who saw that inscription, it was a challenge not to get discouraged by the oppressive system but to know that eventually the truth shall conquer.

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