Fraternity-Testvériség, 1961 (39. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1961-09-01 / 9. szám

FRATERNITY

9

the Church’s schools. It saw that one of the best groups of people in the country, holding key positions in every village community in the land, was in danger of being squeezed out of existence. Within the Church, however, the best minds were ashamed to approach the State with cap in hand. Men pointed to the example of the British and American Churches, which were entirely free, and had therefore to be completely self-supporting in matters of education, as well as the support of the ministry. But the Hungarian Reformed Church, as a result of centuries of struggle, was almost completely exhausted, spiritually, as well as materially; and now sapped by a wave of rationalism, it simply could not rise to meet the needs of the hour. The Church had entered into a vicious circle. Few ministers were preaching the Gospel, people would not go to church to hear dry rationalism from the pulpit, and young Reformed men and women were coming out of the Church schools with no religious faith. Religious practices were being dropped in the homes of the people, and the Bible was becoming almost a closed book to the masses. Some in the Church itself could now no longer see any reason for keeping open church schools at all, and during this period the Reformed Church actually handed over to the State several hundreds of its elementary schools. In Transylvania, for example, the Reformed Church had 587 schools in 1867; in 1891 this number had dropped to 133; in 1896 to 352; while in 1897 there were only 278 left.

Another result of the spiritual deadness of the Church at this period was the rise of the sects. They offered food to the hungry sheep that looked up and were not fed by the Church. In the eighties, for example, large numbers of peasants on the Great Plains, now living in abject poverty, turned to a new movement which called itself the Nazarene movement, which looked for the speedy end of the world. The official Church had nothing to put in the place of the teaching of the Nazarenos, and stood by help-