Fraternity-Testvériség, 1956 (34. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1956-08-01 / 8. szám
18 FRATERNITY Church in America, the Hungarian Presbyterian Conference, and the Reformed Church in America, also with the members of the American Hungarian Reformed Ministerial Association, the American Hungarian Elders Association, the World Alliance of Free Hungarian Reformed Churches and Societies, want to call your kind attention to the following facts: a) Hungary came under the Communist and Russian rule against her own will and against the Yalta Agreement. b) The 54th paragraph of the Constitution of the Hungarian People’s Republic says that “the Hungarian People’s Republic assures freedom of conscience and religion to all citizens. For the purpose of freedom of conscience, the Hungarian People’s Republic separates the Church from the State”. c) Against the quoted constitutional guarantee, there is no real freedom of religion in Hungary. From among the four Reformed Theological Seminaries before the Communist regime, two are closed, Sárospatak and Papa; and the remaining two came under a strict Communist control, Budapest and Debrecen. All elementary and secondary school and higher educational institutions of the Reformed Church of Hungary, with the sole exception of the Gymnasium in Debrecen, were closed or rather nationalized. With the exception of the Church buildings and cemeteries, they took away all the property of the Reformed Church of Hungary, although all of it was the fruit of sacrificial giving of her members. They reduced the four Synods to three. They seized all but two Church papers, and these two, “The Way” (Az Ut) and “The Reformed Church” (Református Egyház), are both under Communist direction. d) They confined religion among the walls of the Church buildings. They hinder the teaching of religion with all possible means. They do not permit the function of religious organizations. e) The government pays entirely or partly the salaries of ministers and professors at the remaining theological seminaries, and thereby exercises moral and material constraint over them. f) The official leaders of the Reformed Church of Hungary today follow the Muscovite line with all their power. A brochure, which came out of Hungary in May of this year, and reached Canada and the United States, throws a very interesting light upon the conditions of Reformed Church life. We are enclosing its translation. g) On the basis of the above our Brethren can form their own opinion about the situation in which the Reformed Church of Hungary is today, and we believe you will follow with sympathy the endeavor of the members’ great majority in that Church, that the Church might be purely and exclusively CHURCH. The Convention adopted the submitted declaration without discussion.
