Magyar Egyház, 1972 (51. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1972-01-01 / 1. szám
6 MAGYAR EGYHÁZ MAGYAR CHURCH ENROUTE TOWARDS TOMORROW The Magyar Church, the official magazine of the Hungarian Reformed Church in America, a monthly publication, is entering the 51st year of its life. With the help of God, we are starting our second half century. During the past fifty years world powers have disappeared and new empires have been bom. Political systems have come and gone. Humanity has swung from one extreme to the other. W ars and revolutions have decimated the best of people, millions of young had perished. Dailies, weeklies and monthly magazines, with circulations of over a million copies, have appeared only to vanish again. Millions of people have wandered from country to country in search of a new home. Hundreds of thousands of Hungarians have sought asylum in distant lands to escape the inimical foreign domination imposed upon their country bent on destroying their nation, stealing their properties and exterminating their convictions. The storms of history have blown away much, but by the grace of God the Hungarian Reformed Church in America and her monthly publication, The Magyar Church still stand. It would indeed be worthwhile to examine the battles, heroism and the sacrifices, which have sustained the Church and the Magyar Church. But, of course, every human effort would have been in vain if the power, the will and determination of God had not supported our Church and her magazine! He had willed that we should be! He had decided that we should remain! He had willed that we should fulfill our singular mission, which no one else could have accomplished for us! Instead of analyzing the past, let us look at the future! Where are we? Which road shall we follow! What are our goals? Our questions are partly answered by our very name. We are in the United States of America, and this is our place. Not so much as a result of our own choice, but because God, in prescience of the events of history, had decided to transplant and thus save His Church here. The Lord has chosen us to be the Church of opportunities. We may pray to Him, when in a large part of the world prayer is being silenced, we may work for Him at a time, when, including the land of our birth, over a large part of the world men are prescribing the direction the Church must follow and the amount of service the Church may do. We may lead a Christian life, we may serve our congregations, we may lead our people. We may build Churches, fellowship halls, care centers, because God has granted us the opportunity to do so. Our name also implies that we are a Hungarian Church, and we must so remain. Our forebearers were fully aware of this fact, for them “Hungarian” and “Reformed” were related concepts, almost like synonyms. This is not surprising because Hungarians made up the membership of the Reformed Church, and the Reformed Church in turn represented the Hungarian cause during the past centuries of history. As this dual conceptuation nurtured the founders of the Church in the past, so also it can nurture our future Church. It is for this reason, that the name of our Church periodical is Magyar (Hungarian) Church. This is the reason that our congregations have remained Hungarian. We remained true to our past, and we have inherited the future. (The Hungarian Reformed Churches in America did not divide themselves into two, and later three camps, because of religious differences, but rather because the ministers of the one group wanted to remain true to their Hungarian heritage, whereas the ministers of the other group saw assymilation as the way of the future. Since then, history has amply proved which group had the correct view. The idea of uniting again, similarly, can only be conceived if it is founded on the principle: “Loyalty to God and the Hungarian heritage, to Jesus and to our people!). Ministers of the Hungarian Reformed Church in America take their oaths of office in the Hungarian language. This oath binds us. It binds us to serve our people, to remain loyal to the Hungarian language, and to fight for the future of Hungarians everywhere. In this period of great changes, when the American Protestant Churches and the huge Roman Catholic Church are in a running competition with a world gone amuck, our mission is to remain true to the purpose for which God has created us. We must serve all Hun-
