Calvin Synod Herald, 2016 (117. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

2016-07-01 / 7-8. szám

6

CALVIN SYNOD HERALD

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The Organization of the Hungarian Reformed Synod at the West Side Hungarian Reformed Church,

Cleveland, OH - March 14-16, 1939.

churches “Hungarian Reformed Church” (of the given city or place).

“Hungarian” and “Reformed,” these are identification marks. I do not know what goes through one’s mind passing by one of these churches and reading the name of the church. But I know what they do not think if they are not Hungarian. They do not think that this is a place for them. Please bear with me; my intention is not to criticize, but to have a reality check. Once upon a time when people’s eyes were flooded with tears seeing the name of one of these churches. After weeks or months of travelling (and sometimes even years of waiting in a “transit camp” somewhere in Western Europe) finally they knew that they arrived, when they saw the familiar name above the church door. They knew that they belong there. They heard the familiar language, ate the familiar food, and they were helped by those who arrived before them. This is part of the history which we must cherish. Even more, we need to keep this tradition alive, since there are still newcomers who are in need of a friendly word, and a bowl of gulyás soup. But there are less and less people who decide to immigrate from the Hungarian population of the Carpathian Basin to America. And even when they come, we need to acknowledge that there are less and less regular churchgoers among them. I think it is obvious that the kind of church organizing patterns we inherited from our forefathers and mothers are not sustainable anymore. But what kind of system is it? I just want to highlight some of its features. The reader needs to keep in mind that I am painting with a wide brush here. My goal is not to have a detailed picture of the life of a particular church, but to identify some of the main characteristics which (more or less) typical of all of our churches.

First of all, because of the aforementioned reasons (we can even call it “mission”) the “organizing principle” of the church became the church(community) itself. In the world of art there is a movement called l'art pour Part (art

for art’s sake). It expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art is in itself. There is no need for other reason or utilitarian function for doing art. The motivation and the direction comes not from some “outside” source, but from the activity (of doing art) itself. In the case of a church, it means that the main motivator and decision-making principle is to keep the church “running.” The existence of the church community itself is the intrinsic value to which everything else is subordinated. There is no „other reason” or „utilitarian function” outside of the church. It would not be so bad, if it would leave space for some change in the process. However, in most of the cases “keeping the doors of the church open” means the conservation of the received system. This “system” is called “our tradition” but erroneously. Most of the time these are not “traditions” in the first meaning of the phrase. They are so much more “customs” which emerged from the history of the church itself, and not strictly speaking from the Bible or from Reformed Theology. It would take time and effort to clear up the differences between “traditions” (based on biblicaltheological tenets), and local “customs” (based on what kind of church environment one was raised and being familiar with). Just one example here (but we will come back to this issue in a subsequent article), the Communion. In the Reformed tradition Communion is one of the two sacraments (alongside with Baptism). The Hungarian Reformed Communion service has additional elements (most importantly the renewal of covenantal wows). The vast majority of the members of our churches do not know what kind of biblicaltheological implications are taken up into the way how we serve Communion. The only thing they know is how they “always” received it. Complications emerge when a new pastor wants to change something (e.g., let a lay minister help with the distribution of the bread and the wine). Most probably the pastor will be questioned, and the argument will go something like, “This is not our way of doing it.”