Communism and the Church: Civic Students’ Solutions to Religious Persecution

Building on the concepts of content-centered learning and historical empathy, this study examined students’ perceptions and rankings regarding the suppression of the Protestant church’s social and religious influence in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. High school students ranked nine possible plans of action to both silence and diminish the Protestant church’s influence on East German citizens. Students evaluated both secretive and passive strategies developed by the East German government, ranked from most to least effective. They also listed positive and negative traits and potential consequences of each option, along with their rankings. The results revealed that students increasingly favored an active anti-religion campaign within schools and a mandatory government loyalty requirement for communist youth.