Reformátusok Lapja, 1957 (57. évfolyam, 1-22. szám)

1957-06-01 / 11. szám

Volume LVIL, Number 11. EGYHÁZI ÉS VALLÁSOS NÉPLAP Lancaster, Pa., June 1, 1957.

A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT OF OUR CHURCH

ON THE BIRTHDAY OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

To the Hungarian Pastors and Congregations of the Evangelical and Reformed Church

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

The editor of the Reformátusok Lapja has been kind and thoughtful enough to call to my attention the fact that on June 9, 1957 — 400 years ago this year — the Diet of Torda in Transylvania, Hungary, passed an Act granting religious tolerance to its citizens, an Act which is said to be the first such Act passed by any legislative body in the world. That Act, among other things, provides as follows: “Each person may hold whatever religious faith he wishes, with old or new rituals, while we at the same time leave it to their judgment to do as they please in the matter of their faith, just so long, however, as they bring no harm to bear on anyone at all, lest the followers of a new religion be a source of irritation to the old profession of faith or become in some way injurious to its followers . . .”

It strikes me that from the historical viewpoint alone this was a legislative act of major significance. Those were times when the conflict between the Mohammedan east and the Christian west was exceedingly intense. In addition, this was scarcely a quarter-century after the Protestant Reformation had been launched in Switzerland and Germany, and that the implications of that Reformation could have so swiftly been translated into any country’s legislative act bespeaks on the part of the Hungarians of four centuries ago a sensitivity to moral and spiritual values hardly surpassed anywhere else in the western world.

To recall this event now is far more than simply the celebration of a historical memory.

It helps to explain to me the remarkable courage and conviction manifested by the people of Hungary last October when, at the calculated risk of their lives and the actual sacrifice of the same on the part of many of them, they revolted against the oppression and indignities of the Russian - dominated Communist regime in Hungary. There are those who would say that the October revolt failed. History will speak otherwise, I am sure; for it is my own conviction that the brave and costly act of the Hungarian people was this generation’s finest testimony reasserting the dignity of the human spirit as the offspring of the God and Father of us all.

I am pleased to learn that Hungarians in America are planning to commemorate this outstanding event in the history of the agelong struggle for human freedom. I hope that our Hungarian pastors and churches will plan appropriate services in commemoration of this event. Uppermost in those services will certainly be a great wave of corporate prayer sent upward to God in behalf of our brethren and sisters in Hungary who continue to suffer under the cruelties and restraints imposed by governments which in disavowing a belief in God have disavowed also that belief in man which is a primary article of our faith as Christians. My greetings to you all, and my gratitude to Hungarian friends throughout our churches and those whom I was happy to meet when I visited that land which is so dear to you all.

Yours sincerely,

James E. Wagner