The Reformed Church promoted literacy, trade, and the republican models of government. Calvinists fought for the freedom of consciousness, opposed the complete merging of Lithuania and Poland, founded the first capitalist enterprise in Kėdainiai.
Reformation makes up a significant part of Lithuania's cultural heritage, yet one that is not always acknowledged today. Lithuania is still a young state, politically and culturally. Many things still need to be discovered and comprehended in our historical identity.
While debating energy projects, education, housing renovation, relations with neighbouring states, Lithuanians are engaging in a constant process of self-apprehension and self-affirmation as a nation.
And that is no easy task in ever-changing Europe. On top of that, Lithuania is torn between two competing national history paradigms. One of them asserts that the medieval Grand Duchy and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth make up a rich layer of our historical past, one that needs to be embraced as our own, studied, learnt from.
Other scholars – like professor Alvydas Jokubaitis – represent the opposing camp. He claims that the modern Republic of Lithuania is not heir to the Grand Duchy. Jokubaitis believes that modern Lithuania and its political consciousness stems from the nation state of the interwar and not from the Grand Duchy or the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After all, the professor says, the US Americans do not associate their nationhood with Native Americans.
It is important what kind of memory we choose to foster and how we perceive ourselves. Memory is not a collection of sentiments – it relates out our self-perception, state- and society-building with all that entails. Who are those “Native Americans” in the history of Lithuania?
Calvinists must be a part of them. As a religious minority, Calvinists are particularly sensitive to suggestions to abandon our history and identify only with the nation state from between the wars. We do not wish to give up our religious identity which goes back to spiritual and political events in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Why, for example, should we forget about the Brest Bible, published in 1563 and sponsored by Lithuanian nobleman Mikolaj the Black Radziwill? It was the first complete translation of the Bible from its original languages into Polish.
So it was the Protestant Lithuania that gave Poland its first bible. Why was it translated into Polish rather than Lithuanian? Because it was a choice made by Radziwill the Black in order to overcome the prohibition from Rome to print bibles as effectively as possible and to circulate it among Polish-Lithuanian noblemen in the language they best understood. Despite the fact that Calvinist elites used Polish in their synods until the 20th century, there was not the slightest effort to Polonize Lithuanian peasants.
Whereas Polish Catholics often felt obliged not only to the Church, but to Poland as well, which they felt was a European-Catholic fortress against Russia. Catholicism was identified with Polishness and used as a weapon against the hegemony of Orthodox Russia.
Polishness was something to be promoted. Therefore in the eastern borderline lands of ethnic Lithuania, the future of national identity in many Lithuanian villages depended on the policies of local Catholic parish priests. There are still places – around Sejny or the Belarusian border – where one can hear views that “the Lithuanian language does not go to heaven” or “God understands Polish, but not Lithuanian.”
Polish-speaking Calvinists did the opposite. Following the Reformation prescription that believers must hear the word of God in the language they know best, Polish-speaking Lithuanian noblemen or Calvinist Poles would publish catechisms for peasants in Lithuanian.
Calvinist priests could not be appointed to Lithuanian parishes if they did not speak Lithuanian. We, present-day Calvinists, must not and will not forget this fact. Lithuanian Calvinist do not have a reason to resent or feel culturally inferior to the Polish people.
And Poles should understand that, in the still recent past, many a generation of Lithuanian intellectuals had to go through a period of inner conflicts before they chose to speak Lithuanian publicly.
Because of so many long-lasting policies of denationalization, Lithuanians are particularly sensitive to any topic relating to their native tongue. Can enemies of the country use this situation to their advantage? After all, the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire was when the seemingly inconsequential minorities of Jews and Christians refused to take part in the state-consolidating cult of emperor worship.
The Empire failed to adapt and instead chose to persecute Christians. It might sound strange, but that's what happened. If we looked at today's realities in Lithuania through theology, we could joke that the Lithuanian language is a sort of a pagan idol for many good people in this country. From the Christian perspective, though, one must abide by the law of “thou shalt have no other gods before me.” A point made by Peter and the apostles is worth remembering, too: “We ought to obey God rather than men.”
If we look at this situation only from the historical perspective of the interwar Republic, there's a big chance that many good things will fail even before they begin – if a minority shows lack of reverence to a “state-solidifying” deity. It is often believed that the state, its culture, international law are something modern, even scientific. In fact, we, as a society, are what we believe in. Foundations of our values matter and so do the historic grievances that we think of.
True, one must have faith that pragmatism in politics will prevail, that the necessary agreements will be signed. But it is not just the right-wing electorate who will remain suspicious of any Polish issues for a long time to come.
If we could conceive, even purely speculatively, of a force contrary to the interests of Lithuania and Poland – and of that force having anything to do with the current tensions between the two – that force would certainly have as its top priority maintaining such suspicions.
Therefore, for the sake of our honour as well as interests, we must accept and value every part of Lithuania, making no exceptions of historical fragments we do not like, different people or communities. Be they Poles, Calvinist, or any other “Native Americans.” Such is the only road to freedom.
Tomas Šernas is a former Lithuanian customs officer and the only survivor of the Medininkai Massacre on 31 July 1991. He survived the point-blank shot to his head, but became disabled. After extensive medical treatment and rehabilitation, Šernas graduated from theological studies at Klaipėda University and joined the Reformed churches as a parson of the Vilnius parish. In 2010, he was elected for a three-year term as the General Superintendent of the Evangelical Reformed Church of Lithuania.
