Fraternity-Testvériség, 1993 (71. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
1993-04-01 / 2. szám
FRATERNITY Page 5 The Father of the Federation Every event in human history is preceded by someone’s dreams or visions. Any great spiritual, political and social movement was not a happening just in a moment. Luther’s Reformation was not begun on October 31, 1517, that historical event meant a painstaking thought process of Luther’s mind and soul for years. Who was the visionary prophet who thought, prayed, and imagined about the necessity of a fraternal organization like ours? We usually start out by saying that on July 4-5, 1896 in Trenton, New Jersey there was a meeting of six Hungarian Reformed ministers (or missionaries as they like to call themselves at that time) and some laymen from the six already existing Hungarian churches who decided to organize a Hungarian classis of the (German) Reformed Church in the United States, and at the same meeting, as a helping "side-arm" to create a fraternal society for the welfare of the Hungarian Reformed immigrants which they called Hungarian Reformed Federation of America. But history or life is not that simple. It is just a very simplistic reasoning to think that the idea was bom on July 5, 1896. It is obvious that someone had to come to this meeting having the foundation of a nation-wide fraternal organization in mind. There had to be a visionary, who wrestled with the real problems of life of the new Hungarian Reformed community, saw the need and formulated a plan of action. In other words, there had to be a founding father of the Hungarian Reformed Federation in America. Who was he? We need to know it, we have to be aware of it and yes, teach it to our children. I wish it could be taught and should be taught in every confirmation class of our churches as undeniably the Hungarian Reformed Federation is the greatest achievement of our hundred year old history. In the American church history each denomination has a "founding father." The Episcopalian American knows that the first bishop in the United States was Bishop William White of Philadelphia, the Presbyterians consider Francis Makemie, who organized the first (Philadelphia) presbytery in colonial America. The Methodists revere Bishop Asbury as the shaper of American Methodism. In the history of the Hungarian Reformed community we are told about the "first ministers" but the truth is that the man who laid the foundation of the American Hungarian church life and who saw the vision of a nation-wide fraternal organization, i.e. ours, was the Rev. Ferenc Ferenczy, who died ninety- five years ago and his parishioners built a highly artistic and large monument in his memory which stood there forgotten for decades in the beautiful Homewood Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The time has arrived that this indisputable fact be recognized. Who was this man, whose four years ministry shaped our Hungarian life in America? We do not know the year he was born. The monument in Pittsburgh says that he was bom in 1856. The inscription book of Sárospatak College dates his birth in 1857. He was born in the upper part of the county of Abauj (now Slovakia) and his father was a Reformed school teacher with qualifications to preach. In Hungarian it was called "lévita." The population was mixed in that area and Ferenc Ferenczy spoke Slovak since childhood. For twelve years he studied in Sárospatak College and Seminary. During his years in Sárospatak he learnt some English, and also German. After graduation from the ancient school of our Hungarian Reformed faith, he was licensed as an assistant minister serving in different churches of the counties of Abauj and Zemplén from where most of the early immigrants came to America. During his ministry, the people of those villages had the emigration fever. He prayed with the young men who left their native land for the coal mines and the steelmills of the new world. He experienced all the trauma what the ongoing migrations meant to the young wives and children left behind. He had to pray at many occasions when the sad news arrived that the young husband and father died in a mine explosion thousands of miles away. In many villages he preached to the Slovak Reformed people as well as in their native language. I was not able to discover the reason why he was not elected as a pastor and remained an assistant minister for all those years, but I am certain that God prepared him for his glorious ministry in America. He loved the people, he not only spoke several languages, but he really spoke his people’s language. We are not writing church history now, but a few fact we have to mention. The Board of Home Missions of the Reformed Church in the United States called him to be an assistant pastor in the first church in America: the Pittsburgh congregation. The internal situation was untenable in the Pittsburgh church. The Church had built the first church building in this country, but there were hardly any services. The first pastor had the mania to be always on the road and the doors of the church were closed even on high holidays as the minister was engaged in a "colonization" project in Canada. Finally, he left for the province of Saskatchewan and by April, 1894 Rev. Ferenczy was appointed the pastor. In less than three months, he finally organized the church: not only in Pittsburgh, but with regular services and "sister
