Among the Czech villages in Banat, Svatá Helena is the only one where Christian communities of different denominations have lived side by side for a long time. Evangelicals of the Helvetic faith came to the area with the first wave of colonisation in the 1820s. For several decades, starting from the 1860s, they were administered for several decades from the evangelical congregation in Clopodia, and it was only from 1904 until the beginning of World War II that independent evangelical pastors were active in St Helena.
From the 1890s onwards there was a split among the evangelical community in St Helena. As a consequence of the disputes, some of the evangelical families left for Bulgaria (in several waves from 1897), where they founded the village of Vojvodovo. The split of the St. Helena Protestants was especially influenced by arrival of other Reformed faiths: from the late 19th century onwards, it was the Free Reformed Church, and after the First World War, it was the Baptists. In 1979, the evangelical congregation in St Helena ceased to exist as it merged with the Baptists.
A view of the interior. (Photo by K. Jíchová, 10/2022.)
In 1862, an evangelical school was established in St. Helena, which was also used as a house of prayer. In 1895-1897, a new, similarly sized Protestant church was built near the Catholic church. It was financed mainly by donations. The original house of prayer became an evangelical rectory. In 1979, the church and rectory were handed over to the Baptist Church. The church was renovated in 2016-2017.
The church is a single-nave building with a bell tower slightly forward of the axis of the main façade and a semicircular end. It was built in the late classicistic style.
A youth band singing at a congregation
A mandolin orchestra playing at a congregation
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Projekt byl podpořen z prostředků Ministerstva zahraničních věcí ČR v rámci projektů veřejné diplomacie.
