Paragraph: (Wiki_articles-paragraphs-wikiAlbania-66.txt)
Sent 1: The Albanians first appear in the historical record in Byzantine sources of the late 11th century.
Sent 2: At this point, they were already fully Christianized.
Sent 3: Islam later emerged as the majority religion during the centuries of Ottoman rule, though a significant Christian minority remained.
Sent 4: After independence (1912) from the Ottoman Empire, the Albanian republican, monarchic and later Communist regimes followed a systematic policy of separating religion from official functions and cultural life.
Sent 5: Albania never had an official state religion either as a republic or as a kingdom.
Sent 6: In the 20th century, the clergy of all faiths was weakened under the monarchy, and ultimately eradicated during the 1950s and 1960s, under the state policy of obliterating all organized religion from Albanian territories.
Sent 7: The Communist regime that took control of Albania after World War II persecuted and suppressed religious observance and institutions and entirely banned religion to the point where Albania was officially declared to be the world's first atheist state.
Sent 8: Religious freedom has returned to Albania since the regime's change in 1992.
Sent 9: Albania joined the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in 1992, following the fall of the communist government, but will not be attending the 2014 conference due a dispute regarding the fact that its parliament never ratified the country's membership.
Sent 10: Albanian Muslim populations (mainly secular and of the Sunni branch) are found throughout the country whereas Albanian Orthodox Christians as well as Bektashis are concentrated in the south and Roman Catholics are found in the north of the country.
Sent 11: The first recorded Albanian Protestant was Said Toptani, who traveled around Europe, and in 1853 returned to Tirana and preached Protestantism.
Sent 12: He was arrested and imprisoned by the Ottoman authorities in 1864.
Sent 13: Mainline evangelical Protestants date back to the work of Congregational and later Methodist missionaries and the work of the British and Foreign Bible Society in the 19th century.
Sent 14: The Evangelical Alliance, which is known as VUSh, was founded in 1892.
Sent 15: Today VUSh has about 160 member congregations from different Protestant denominations.
Sent 16: VUSh organizes marches in Tirana including one against blood feuds in 2010.
Sent 17: Bibles are provided by the Interconfessional Bible Society of Albania.
Sent 18: The first full Albanian Bible to be printed was the Filipaj translation printed in 1990.