Calvin Synod Herald, 1981 (81. évfolyam, 1-6. szám)
1981-01-01 / 1-2. szám
4 CALVIN SYNOD HERALD DELEGATES TO POIANA BRASOV CONFERENCE VISIT EASTERN EUROPEAN CONGREGATIONS Interview with Daniel Neeser Geneva—The Rev. Daniel Neeser, a Geneva pastor, who lived for some time in Romania, had the responsibility of organizing the program of church visits before and after the European Area Council of the M;ARC. RPS asked Mr. Neeser which churches were visited, and how the choice was made: Neeser: All too often, delegates to such international conferences find themselves almost entirely absorbed in their immediate task, with few opportunities to meet the people of their host church, or to sample any of the day-to-day life of the congregations. They remain strangers, apart. But the theme of this Assembly happened to be “The Covenant of God with His People”. It was clearly unthinkable to spend five days in Romania without a valid encounter with the People of God there, especially since the choice of the venue had been so carefully considered beforehand. For this reason, a way had to be found for the congregations of the area to have opportunities to welcome delegates on their home ground. The chief purpose of the visits was, then, to allow encounters, however brief, between the delegates of the Reformed Churches of Europe and the Reformed congregations in Romania and her neighbouring countries. In our choice of congregations to be visited, we were limited to those in places of easy access near the Romanian border: Belgrade and Subotica3 in Yugoslavia, Szeged and Debrecen in Hungary and Kosice4 in Czechoslovakia. In Romania, we arranged for visits to some fifteen congregations in and around Cluj (Klausenburg), Sibiu5 (Hermanstadt) and Bucharest. RPS: What about the language barrier? Was this not a rather formidable obstacle? Neeser: This certainly proved to be a vital issue: it obliged Western Europeans to become more aware of the common culture, language and history of most of the Reformed Churches in that part of Eastern Europe — Hungarian. This heritage constitutes an important part of the identity of these Member Churches, and also explains the origins of certain tensions in countries like Romania, where the ethnic majority is not Hungarian. The situation today is that all these minority churches are under the legal control of their Government; at the same time, without this context, the congregations of the Reformed Church in Romania retain a strong sense of their Hungarian origin, and this is clearly seen in the expression of their faith. RPS: Would these visits to the congregations not place the Reformed churches in this part of Eastern Europe in a delicate position with their State authorities? Neeser: That is a difficult question to answer. Probably some people had to avoid contacts of too direct or too deep a kind, and yet I should stress that these visits were organized under the combined auspices of the WARC and the Church and Government authorities in each country. RPS: Did you get any “feed-back” from this experiment of congregational visits? Neeser: Yes, and it was quite favorable on the whole (although perhaps less so from the authorities of the Reformed Church in Romania!) Everywhere we went, we received a warm and open-hearted welcome, which was often extremely moving. The full impact of such an experience is difficult to put into words: the look in the eyes of a peasant woman steadfastly fixed on a visitor during an entire church service; this transcends human speech and gives your presence an almost overwhelming importance. Unfortunately, transportation problems prevented some groups from reaching congregations that had been awaiting their arrival from 10 to 18 hours! These visits were also useful to the significance of the Assembly as a whole, as they made it possible for delegates from Western countries to understand their Eastern counterparts better, to accept the limits that are imposed upon them and which they impose upon themselves, to grasp the meaning behind a certain attitude, a certain word here and there: — the indirect ístimony of that which cannot be overtly expressed. Notes: 3Szabadka Brassó 4Kassa 2Kolozsvár ’Nagyszeben MORAL MAJORITY SCORED BY TOP CHURCH LEADERS Fifteen major Protestant leaders, including UCC President Avery D. Post, have condemned the Christian Right as biblically unsound and their selection of political issues to be “theologically and ethically inadequate.” The criticism was directed at Moral Majority, Christian Voice and the Christian Voters’ Victory Fund for “the narrow range of issues” they advocate and the demand that candidates conform to their “religious and ideological lines,” rather than to “the breadth of responsible Christian positions.” Arguing that Christians should be engaged in politics, the fifteen church leaders were careful to emphasize that churches and their officials have the right to comment on issues, mobilize members to support or oppose legislation and provide voting records of office holders. In a related report, Norman Lear, the television producer, backed by People for the American Way, an advisory group of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish leaders, has contributed $200,000 to produce five 60- second television spots to counter the activities of the politically active right wing Christian organizations. The networks have refused to air the spots, claiming they are too controversial. They are being placed on local stations with money contributed to buy the time.
