Magyar Egyház, 1972 (51. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1972-11-01 / 11. szám
6 MAGYAR EGYHÁZ YOUTH AND THE CHURCH! Distinguished Clergy — Ladies and Gentlemen: If change is progress, a cardinal tenet of the liberals, this surely is the most progressive era in history! All the eternal truths and codes man learned are damned by the new prophets who say we have been worshipping Baal instead of worshipping them. Hundreds of different medicine men — within and without the church — shrilly proclaim, that what we thought was right is wrong and vice versa! Some ministers and certain bishops even have taken to talking about situation morals and situation ethics! The sound, fury and confusion make Babel seem like the good old days. Some churches have changed and compromised their theological and moral teachings to the point where even a worm couldn't find objections to joining! But, what God-fearing and selfrespecting human would wish to cavort with a hunch of worms in the gutter! No wonder some churches are dying! The old are driven away and there is no attraction for the young to join — no challenge being offered, no goal for them to strive for to achieve! Gnder circumstances like these, unless we can reverse the trend, the churches are doomed! There was a time — in fact not too long ago — when our children were being taught some morals in the public schools. In fact, they used to pray before the school day started. This is no longer so, for the action on November 8, 1971, on the floor of the U. S. House of Representatives could well mean, that for the forseeahle future, it will never again he legal for school children to pray together in a public school in the U.S.A. While a majority vote was garnered for the prayer amendment, it was still 28 short of obtaining the required two-thirds. Outrageously the executioners of school prayer were men who claim to speak for the churches of our country. The U.S. Catholic Conference, the Lutheran Council of U.S.A. and the National Council of the Church of Christ in the U.S.A., among others, issued statements against the amendment. The latter’s statement also was co-signed by the American Ethical Union and the American Humanist Association, hardly by any stretch of the imagination or language, Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.! One of the major arguments used against the school prayer amendment was, that it would breach the wall of separation between Church and state and introduce new religious devisiveness in our land, marking a historic change of course from government neutrality with respect to religion, as provided by the first amendment. Any one over nine years of age realizes the naivete of this simplistic argument, as for nearly 200 years now we have had prayer in the schools of America without destroying the first amendment or amalgamating church and state. Within the memory of most of us the words “under God” were added to the “Pledge of Allegiance” without arousing significant opposition. As 1 see it, the danger in public school prayer is not that a particular religion is being favored but that lack of it establishes a new state religion — strictly humanistic pragmatic and secular conceptions atheism by any name! Elected and appointed officials someday will have to answer somewhere, if not to their constituents then ultimately to Him who said: “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of Heaven”. In the meantime, however, what are we, members of the church, clergy and laity, going to do in an attempt to reverse the ever downward trend of morality, the ever grater loss of our youth to the mundane pursuits of self-satisfaction, and what are we going to do, to entice them to come hack and become active members of the church? Just crying and complaining about loss of the youth, the wringing of the hands, the recitation of old parables is not going to reverse the trend! We are going to have to change the methodology of approach to the youth of our church; not necessarily the tenets, the morals, the theology by which we live and by which our forebears have lived. We are going to have to change the methodology because we must admit to ourselves that times do change; the approach must change; the old methods of whipping them to coming to church by fear, by persecution no longer will work! We must appeal to their reason, we must appeal to their minds, we must challenge them, we must make religion viable, livable, meaningful for this day and all the days to come! How can we do this? First of all, it depends a great deal upon the clergy! The Hungarian Reformed Church of America cannot wait to have ministers pop out of the Old Country every 20 years, or so, when there might be another revolution! We must undertake to educate our own, and we must undertake and educate our own in such a fashion that they can function equally well within the Hungarian as well as the English sphere of influence! Our ministers must he endowed with superior training, superior knowledge, superior moral standards! They must be able to set a superior example. The youth of today has too much mundane education to accept the platitudinous statement—“Do
