Some values have to be fought for, risked and sacrificed
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Peter Morée was born on 28 January 1964 in the Netherlands and spent his childhood in a family environment of conservative Protestant faith. After graduating from grammar school in 1982, he began studying theology at the Faculty of Theology in Utrecht. During his university studies he became involved in the activities of Hebe Kohlbrugge, a Dutch Protestant theologian. He was given the task of maintaining contacts with dissident and evangelical circles in Czechoslovakia and carrying secret correspondence. The turning point for him was a one-year study stay in Prague, where he studied at the Comenius Evangelical Theological Faculty from October 1985. He met Evangelical pastors who were suppressed by the regime, as well as organizers of residential seminaries, and was inspired by their inner freedom. He came to understand that these values had to be fought and risked for. In the spring of 1987 he secretly took the manuscript of a new church hymnal to Holland, which was published under the title New Song. From 1987 to 1990 he studied theology and Slavic studies with a focus on Czech in Utrecht and in November 1989 he took part in the events of the Velvet Revolution in Prague. He had been preparing his doctoral project on Milíč of Kroměříž since 1990 and defended his doctoral thesis in Amsterdam in 1998. He moved to Prague permanently in October 1993 to work at the Evangelical Theological Faculty (ETF) and also got married there. At the ETF he focused on modern history, the role of the Evangelical Church in the communist period and especially the personality of Josef Lukl Hromádka. He was a founding member of Institut Pontes, a human rights civil society organization dedicated to supporting independent dissident and church initiatives in Cuba. In 2025 Peter Morée was a professor at the Department of Church History at the ETF of Charles University and lived in Prague.
