Fraternity-Testvériség, 1965 (43. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1965-06-01 / 6-7. szám

2

FRATERNITY

can thing ... In their oxen way, as Handlin describes in his book, they began the fastest and the quickest and the best road towards Americanization. They founded their own churches and their own FRATERNAL ORGANIZATIONS. In many instances the chronological order was reversed — first the branch of the Federation was organized and the church came later.

In the words of the Harvard historian: “The very process of getting established revealed to each group the differences that divided it from every other. The immigrants thus caught a glimpse of the apartness, the separateness implicit in Americanization

But the historian goes on to say that these fraternal organizations by the uprooted immigrants are THE STRENGTH OF AMERICA. The different waves of immigrants KEPT THE UNITED STATES GROWING not only in a sense of numbers and statistics — BUT AS THE GREATEST AND FINEST SOCIETY, WHICH OFFERS A COMPLETELY FREE DEVELOPMENT FOR EVERY SINGLE INITIATIVE, IN ALL FIELDS OF HUMAN LIFE.

THE STRUCTURE OF A FRATERNAL ORGANIZATION IS TYPICALLY NEW WORLD PRODUCT. IT IS ENTIRELY AMERICAN. BUT ALL THESE ORGANIZATIONS WERE BEGUN BY NEW-COMERS IN THIS COUNTRY. What our founding fathers did in 1896, they might not have realized it to the fullest extent at that time, BUT WE KNOW AO IT’. They paved the way to the moment, when their children or their children's children WILL CONTRIBUTE THE FULLNESS OF THEIR SPIRITUAL AND CULTURAL HERITAGE TO THEIR BELOVED OWN AMERICAN NATION, WHERE THEY ARE STRANGERS NO MORE — no more uprooted.

Hungarian Reformed Federation of America is not only a name of our background, but it describes our God-given duty and responsibility today and in the future.

For many years I have been active in the World Alliance of Reformed and Presbyterian Churches. For more than ten years I served on its policy-making body, the Administrative Committee, and three years ago I was elected as Vice-President of this organization, representing more than 14 denominations with more than eight million church members in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean. How many times I heard compliments