Fraternity-Testvériség, 1961 (39. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1961-10-01 / 10. szám
FRATERNITY 17 and Head of the Church. Moreover, the Reformed Church of Hungary that lias entered the new era which has “dawned” in eastern Europe is a Church which, since the War, lias gone through still another religious revival. Its people have returned to the Bible as never before; its students are as missionary-minded as in the days of the Moravian mission; its ministers are teacher- evangelists to a degree unknown in the life-time of any in Hungary. It was the work of the Reformers in giving the people the Bible in their own tongue which not only really created Magyar as a written tongue, but also instituted a literature and a culture in the hitherto despised language of the Hungarian people. But the Reformed Church all along had largely been composed of the “depressed classes”, and so it is natural that throughout its history, except in the dry rationalistic period of the 19th century, it was ever keenly aware of the social issues consequent upon the acceptance and proclamation of a biblical faith. After the first World War the intensified religious life of the Reformed Church re-awoke the conscience of many to the sorry plight of the peasantry. At that time thousands of Hungarian country people were deliberately limiting their families to one child because of the economic conditions prevailing on the Plains. This limitation of the family to one the Church resolutely fought, both directly by seeking to educate its people on the meaning of Christian family life, and indirectly by openly taking up a political stand in the question of the breaking- up of the large estates; and it was Bishop Ravasz’s voice that was loudest and clearest on this particular issue. He aroused the youth of the various church organizations to make it an issue of their lives to see justice done by the landless peasants, and he was not afraid, in the days of the pre-war conservative government, to speak his mind about the question on the air in broadcast sermons. The Reformed Church Ministers’ Association then took up the question, as