Hungarian Church Press, 1949 (1. évfolyam, 4-13. szám)

1949-06-12 / 8. szám

.THE LEADERS OF THE HUNGARIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH IN SWITZERLAND

Representing the Hungarian Lutheran Church, bishop Lewis Veto and Dr. Ivan Reok, general superinspector left for Switzeriand. Bishop Vető said the following:- During my recent stay in Paris one of the General Secretaries of the Lutheran World Federation, Dr. Steward Hermann, who spent some weeks in Hungary-two years ago called on me.

It was he, who invited me to Geneva to discuss the common affairs of the Hungarian Lutheran Church and the Lutheran World Federation.

Dr. Ivén Reök said the following:- I should like to put right the biased and wrong picture some have of the Hungarian Lutheran Church abroad. I hope this will not be difficult, for it is not hard to convince people of good intentions. Of course to fight ill-will, all endeavours may be futile. There are many abroad who fail to realise the extraordinary toughness with which our Protestant interests were supressed by the Catholic Church of a feudal system with mostly Catholic landowners of political power.

Later the galleys and the burning of heretics went out of fashion, yet all the weapons of spiritual influence and suppression are prevelant. It is no mere chance that the Hungarian v/ar of independence in 1848 stood under the spiritual leadership of the Lutheran Kossuth and the Lutheran Petőfi. Likewise in the revolution of 1918 in the revival after the liberation in 1945> as well as in every kind of spiritual political and social movement that gave life to freedom, humanism and the Protestant leaders were the torchbearers.- The present stand taken by the Lutheran Church comes from the recognition that the Gospel must be proclaimed in a world where revolutionary structural changes take place.

For us, religious liberty does not merely mean the possibility to proclaim the Word of God freely, unfalsified and without compromise, but also an opportunity to disclose deeper truths of tho gospel. The so-called "hard sysings" of Christ, that speak about the human dignity of the working man about his freedom of conscience, and responsibility before God,now

at last can be shouted into the v/orld with a dramatic frankness and sincerity.- All those who think that in the development of daily political, social, and economical tasks the Church must take

an active part,a±e hopelessly mistaken^ The Church acknowledges the authorities, on the ground of the Epistle to the Romans.

But having done so, it must state, after a sober consideration whether the processes which take place in the world are of a progressive or of a regressive nature.Considering the fact that it were always the reactionary regressive regimes that brought