Calvin Synod Herald, 1982 (82. évfolyam, 1-6. szám)
1982-10-01 / 5. szám
CALVIN SYNOD HERALD — 7 — REFORMÁTUSOK LAPJA Luther Memorial Committee The Luther Memorial Committee elected by the All-Hungary Presbytery of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hungary has held Its constituent meeting in Budapest. The festive meeting was opened by Presiding Bishop Dr. Zoltán Káldy who, in his address from the chair, made the following statements: “1983 will be the year in which the Lutherans of the 5 continents and the whole Protestant world will observe the 500th anniversary of the birth of our Reformer, Dr. Martin Luther. In a number of countries the organizations of secular society will also join the celebration, and the social and political effects of Luther’s work and of the Lutheran Reformation will also be appraised. The assessment, re-assessment and, in some cases, even the revised appraisal of Luther and the Reformation started by him were in progress throughout the whole world.” “The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hungary will also join the celebrations. Beside thanksgiving, this jubilee will give us a chance to face Luther and the Lutheran Reformation here and now, at the end of the 20th century, in a church that lives in a socialist society. In the process of this assessment we have asked again and again what the teachings about the theologia crucis, the sola scriptura, the sola fide and the sola gratia mean to us today; what it means to be free in faith yet bound by love, that is, what Christian freedom means today.” “It should not escape our attention that Luther and the Lutheran Reformation had a very great influence on the whole spiritual life of the 16 th and 17 th centuries, specifically in Germany and in other countries as well, and this influence is still continuing.” “We note that, according to historians and socialogists, the Lutheran Reformation and Reformation in general had an anti-feudalistic character. We also note The name Venezuela has a peculiar significance to Hungarian Reformed people. The name is a Spanish derivative of Welzerland, behind which lies an important relationship. The Hungarian galley slaves, of which twenty-three ministers and three teachers survived, were freed by payment of a huge ransom. The wealthy banking family of the Welzers were instrumental in raising the funds from concerned Christians of several nations. They were Reformed people themselves, with roots in Augsburg, Germany. They also gave their name to the first permament colony in the western hemisphere. The Welzers and the Fuggers, another German banking family, loaned great sums to the king of Spain for the colonization and development of the new world, South America being the only part then known to the crown. Emperor Charles V. then made a grant of territory to the Welzers. In 1526, he sent three ships with 500 soldiers and a band of traders to South America to settle this site. Upon landing, they built a fort and then laid out a town. The fortunes of Germany and Spain faltered after the death of the king, and the family’s good will as well. After thirty years, the colony broke up. But its legacy is a nation that bears the name of this Protestant family. that scholars speak of a bourgeois, a popular and a princely Reformation and classify the Lutheran Reformation as a Reformation of the bourgeois type. It is possible that the coming jubilee will give impulses to our scholars and especially historians to rethink these matters and try to answer a number of new questions.” “I hope that the jubilee will present us with a fuller and more true Luther image. We still meet a number of misconceptions both in the church and in secular society which a fuller Luther portrait will most likely discount. Such is, for instance, the often maintained opinion that ‘Luther and the Lutheran Reformation stopped half-way’. That is, the Lutheran Reformation was, in fact, but an imcomplete reformation, when compared with the Calvinistic Reformation or with Anabaptism, Thomas Münzer and Anti-Trinitarism. For the question always concerns the yardstick to measure with: With what do we compare the Lutheran Reformation when we regard it as a half-way reformation? We belive that only the Scripture can decide this question.” “It would be a good idea to examine again the unqualified assertion that Luther, in the Peasant War, simply sided with the ruling class. We deny this.” “I pray to God that He may make the year 1983, with its Luther Jubilee, fruitful for our church, so that we may continue our service with fresh faith, sacrificial love and living hope in our congregations as well as in our society” — was the conclusion of the opening address of Bishop Káldy. Then the Lutheran Memorial Committee discussed the program of the Jubilee Year. The committee, beside churchmen, includes a large number of Hungarian Lutheran scholars and these representing the arts and literature. ____________________________________________________________(HCP) Reformed Settlers in Early America The first Protestants to settle in the western hemisphere were Reformed, including the first foreign missionaries of Protestantism. The Calvinists, as the Reformed were often called, were in the forefront of other attempts to settle the new world. The French established the first Protestant colony in Brazil, in 1555. Due to Roman Catholic persecution, it had a very brief and painful existence. The Dutch also tried to establish a settlement in Brazil, in 1621, which failed for the same reason. The counter- Reformation carried a message of cruelty and death in the Americas as well as in Europe. The Hugenots, as the French Calvinists were called, also landed at the northern edge of Florida, at the mouth of the St. John’s River in the area of present day Jacksonville, in 1562. The Spainards, who claimed sole territorial rights, discovered the intruding Frenchmen (and Protestants, no less!) and immediately sailed to massacre the entire colony. It was another century until the Hugenots fled France, after the Edict of Nantes was revoked and ended religious toleration, and settled in South Carolina. The church they established in 1681 at Charleston still exists as a part of the United Church of Christ. Rev. Albert W. Kovács
