Hungarian Church Press, 1957 (9. évfolyam, 14-15. szám)
1957-12-31 / 15. szám
HCHP XII.31,1957, VoBIX/15-16 17 195 JUST PUBLISHED PROFESSOR DR. BEE kAdAr*S BOCK CK ÜKÉ UET 50 YEARS OP THE REPOEMED CHURCH IN HUNGARY Under the title: "Church in the Storms of the Time" by Professor Dr. Imre Kádár, former leader of the Foreign and Press Department of the Office of the General Convent, a book was published in the care of the publishing enterprise Bibliotheca in the early days of December. The 260 page book reveals the elapsed 50 years of the life of the Reformed Church in Hungary. The rich, documentary material - gathered partly on personal archival researches - treats the formation of the life of the Reformed Church in Hungary during the two './arid Hars and in the time of the revolutions and counter-revolutions. It demonstrates how the church since the liberation - burdened by the inheritance of the interweavings with the Horthy-era - has been struggling for apprehending in faith the kerygma (Kt received from God and more than once just against the kerygma. It minutely deals with the service of the church dove lopped in the circumstances of a socialist community. It unveils the minor and major mistakes committed - though going on the right way after all - by the church polity as well as by that of the state concerning the church in the elapsed years and which overloaded the service of the church received from God. It unmasks the fashionable form of the Christian idolatry tempting even the Hungarian churches: the anti-communism which definitively tries to tie Jesus Christ to the capitalistic social order. It makes evident how this temptation has spoiled and brought certain persons and groups of the Reformed church who cast their eyes on the past, into hazardous enterprisings with unquestionable failure in the time of the 1956 autumn counter-revolution. The author gives the aim of the study as follows:- I take for ny job as witness cf the happenings in the Reformed church participant of some results, acconplice in accessory to some mistakes and the same time victim of them, further an as elder of the church and member of the General Synod to conscientiously make my utmost to contribute to the work of the rebuilding. — This book has been written by a suffering - also on account of his own omissions - cant eup or ary being convinced to help by it to the spiritual oneness of the church. To restore this oneness all people whom this oneness means labour cf love have to join their farces. Joining forces only would be a wobbly basis if we simply let bygones be bygones. We have to know what should we overlook to each other and what should never happen again, and everybody of us has to assume responsibility for all commissions and omissions perpetrated in this heinousness. It is obvious that not every Christian either in Hungary or in the wide world will assume a part of this responsibility, not everybody will come to a contrition, and possibly not the numerical majority. Nevertheless Abraham*s pleading for Sodom is effective even today: "Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And He said: I will not destroy it for ten's sake". The German and English version of the book is under preparation either. A FURTHER HUNGARIAN SCHOLARSHIP-HOLDER LEFT FOR WESTERN EUROPE Pastor Károly Tóth, Referendary of the Department for Interchurch Relations at the Reformed General Convent received a scholarship from the Study Committee of the World Council of Churches to the Theological Faculty in Montpellier, Pastor Tóth who was an outstanding pupil of the Budapest Theological Academy from
