Coena

Coena (from lat. Coena Domini, "Lord's Supper") is association for liturgical, sacramental and spiritual renewal in Czech Protestant churches, mainly in Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren (ECCB). Its members are mostly young ministers but also students and lay people from different churches in Czechia. Coena was founded in November 2002 by students of theology who were interested in liturgy and spiritual life. Some of them had experiences from ecumenical relationships with churches in other countries.

Members of Coena meets twice per year at study seminars to discuss various topics (e.g. theology and practice of celebrating sacraments, office of ordained ministry in church, using rites in a pastoral care, a liturgical music, liturgical traditions of Czech reformation etc.), pray together the Office of Hours (Daily Prayer), train Gregorian chant and celebrate Eucharistic mystery in high-church style. Moreover, Coena runs a web portal and a listserver (currently at URL http://coena.edunix.cz) offering materials for preparing a worship (exegetical and homiletical studies based mainly on Common Revised Lectionary, prayers, chants, propers and complete liturgies), information about liturgy and spiritual life in other Czech or foreign churches, commentaries and polemic discussions. The published materials are used not only by members of ECCB, but also by ministers from other churches.

Internet ist also medium for mutual sharing among members between two following seminars - they serve in church in different regions of whole Czech Republic and Coena must for majority of time live "virtually".

Coena also publishes in printed medias: in 2005 prepared series of liturgical catechesies for church magazine Český Bratr („The Czech Brother“) and next year series about famous persons from ecumenical world for the same magazine. In church press were published also small cards for the Office of Hours, with order of prayer and notation of psalms and chants.

Other activities of Coena that are remarkable: workshop for Daily Prayer and psalmody at Churchwide Youth Congress 2006, chappel with Office prayer during whole Churchwide Youth Congress 2007, study tour in Netherland Protestant churches (June 2005), organisation (together with Protestant Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague) of lectures given by prof. Irmgard Pahl, German researcher in liturgy (May 2007). Members of Coena work also in official church boards for liturgy and hymnology.

The attitude of ECCB towards Coena differ from person to person. Some welcome movement ideas and support them, large part of church is indiferent or ignore it and some look at Coena with strong antipathy and paranoid fear of unexpected changes. In these cases, "Coenists" (especially pastors) are blamed for "romanizing", "crypto-catholicism", "ritualism and sacramentalism" and conservative standpoints in dogmatics and ethics. In fact, Coena is mostly orthodox in the area of dogmatics, but members of Coena have not an unified view of controversial ethical issues, e.g. homosexuality and g&l partnership.