Hungarian Church Press, 1968 (20. évfolyam, 2. szám)

1968-06-01 / 2. szám

HOP Yol XXJapecial Number

1968 No 2- 102-(07806)

of the situations concerned? This "traditional Christian attitude" is clearly characterized by the summarily negative stance of the latest papal encyclical on social problems, notwithstanding its progressive features and sympathetic understanding of the grave problems of mankind: "Revolutionary uprising. «. is the source of new injustices which produce new conditions of inequality and new destructions. We cannot fight against actual ills by trying to e'xpfcl them with what is still worse"« )

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This negative and one-sided attitude to revolutionary changes is in fact nbt so much of a theological character - explains one of the best known experts of Protestant social ethics today, H.D. Wend, land 7^) - as rather of a deeply rooted social nature with a religious colouring. This attitude has been based ri$it to our days on "the powerful, dominant tradition of a conservative or even - in the XIXth and XXth centuries - reactionary Christian thinking. This mentality considers the inherited political and social order«,, sacred and inviolable, as being one given and ordained by God".

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The Eastern Orthodox theologian Vitaly Borovoy also points to the power of an ossified social tradition to account far the immobility of Christian social ethics with regard to the problem of revolution. "It is peculiar that, as soon as'we begin to speak about social renewal, Christians begin to look for avenues of escape; they shrink back from responsible adion and struggle and, at times, they even openly defend social sins simply because the sinful conditions existing for centuries or even millenia have acquired the prestige of tradition",79)

The "Other Line"

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When we refer to what has already become the traditional anti-revolutionary stance of Christianity, we must also mention that, from time to time, the history of Christianity diows evidences of an "other line" of thinking and action, a usually oppositional option for revolution.

This "other line" appears in the so-called heretical and pre-Reformation movements of the Middle Ages,, It was in the wake of the spreading of Wyclif*s teachings that the problem of revolution, under the influence of* ideas of humanism, emerge in the period of declining papal power (1309-1415). The social and political problems of the people, especially of the oppressed peasants, are openly and sincerely voiced in the preaching of Wyclif’s followers, the itinerant Lollardso While criticizing the povser of the church as the owner cf landed estates, they also castigate the abuses of the landlords in general, callous to the ills of contemporary society and the misery of the downtrodden peasantry« Some of them became the leaders of the malcontents« 80 )

The influence of Wyclif)s radicalism spread to many places in Europe. An important centre of revolutionary fervour was Prague where Professor John Huss — until his death as martyr of his convictions - continued to champion