Sárospataki Füzetek 21. (2017)
2017 / 2. szám - RESEARCH PAPERS-FORSCHUNGSMATERIALIEN - Pándy-Szekeres Dávid: Elements of a triangular relationship: the presbyterian church in canada, ethnic Hungarian congregations of the presbyterian curch in canada and the reformed church of hungary
Dávid Pándy-Szekeres they were willing to comply, provided that funds were available for such purposes.9 It was perhaps only in such matters — which were very few and far between — that ethnic Hungarian congregations, or news concerning them, ever entered into the consciousness of the collective body or the lifestream of the PCC. This situation was furthermore evident in that ministers and elders of these congregations participated in rather minimal ways at presbytery, synod, General Assembly or national board levels.10 11 The obvious difficulty was the language barrier, the first priority of these congregations in this question being that their worship services, Christian education and other activities be conducted in their mother tongue. The fact that the minister knew insufficient or minimal English was never perceived as a liability. The PCC as such rarely wandered into this territory, partly because it wished to respect the “autonomy” of the ethnic congregations and partly because, in certain ways, this was unfamiliar territory. Except for the times when their paths crossed to deal with official or administrative duties, these congregations and the main body of the PCC lived in their separate worlds. For those who had voluntarily left Hungary before 1946, emigration brought with it a physical separation from the home church. The RCH, furthermore, was not particularly good at providing ministers for the immigrant communities in Canada. This situation even took a turn for the worse, when, in 1948, a Soviet puppet government in Hungary summarily dismissed the leaders of the RCH and backed the church into a corner. The Iron Curtain had descended, the Cold War had begun and all communication between the emigrant community and the home community moved to its lowest ebb. Like most organizations and churches in the free world, the PCC also registered its general and principled disapproval of the plight of the Eastern European countries and Christian churches under the Soviet yoke, but as a church having in its midst ethnic Hungarian congregations and members gravely affected by these developments, it rarely gave voice to this nor did it actively seek to establish any contact with the RCH, a church under duress but one with which it could claim having an innate relationship. For the next ten years, little was heard within PCC circles of the churches behind the Iron Curtain. The year 1956 was to change all of this, at least for a few years, and it is at this point that the RCH makes an appearance, if only in a very peripheral way: through its fleeing members. The unrest in Poland in the late spring of 1956 inspired an article in the Presbyterian Record'm]\ine,u but despite the events of the Suez canal crisis and the Hungar9 A good example of this co-operation and assistance was demonstrated in the organization of the congregation in Welland, Ontario and in the construction of the church building: Jenő Rúzsa: A Kanadai Magyarság Története, Toronto, С. K. Publishing, 1940. 10 There, of course, were exceptions to this but only in the later years of the period under study. Rev. Dr. László Pándy-Szekeres, for example, served as member and executive member of the Board of World Mission from 1969 to 1974 and also on various other central committees of the PCC. 11 Mikhail Tulin: Has Russia Religious Freedom?, Presbyterian Record, June 1956,4- 6. 170 Sárospataki F űzetek 21, 2017-2
