Fraternity-Testvériség, 1961 (39. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1961-09-01 / 9. szám

FRATERNITY

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Church had accused it, after 1848, of being responsible for the rebellion of that year. On the surface the Reformed Church now appeared both large and strong. According to the statistics compiled in 1858, the four Church Districts of Hungary had in that year just over one million members. These members were divided amongst 88 Church Counties (Presbyteries) in 1427 parishes with 936 out-stations. In that year there were 1433 fully-ordained ministers, 207 assistant ministers and 2074 teachers in Reformed Church schools. In the same year also, in Transylvania, over 300,000 Hungarian Reformed people were living in the midst of Romanians and Saxons, led by 556 ministers and

organized in 18 Church Counties. Transylvania had suffered proportionately worse than elsewhere during and after 1848, as 18 whole

parishes had completely disappeared. The Reformed Church formed a solid bloc in the Trans- Tibiscan area, on the other hand, on the Great Plain of Hungary, but elsewhere its members were widely scattered. In the cities they formed a few huge congregations. Debrecen had 47,000 members, for example, in one parish alone! The other cities of the Plain had proportionately large numbers, but Budapest in that year had

only 4000 Reformed people living in it. Yet

250,000 children were attending Reformed Church schools in that year in Hungary and Transylvania together. Thus, from the point of view of the State and the Roman Church, this seemed a formidable number of “enemies”. And be it remembered that the many minorities in Hungary —Germans, Slovaks, Slovenes, and so forth—who were now becoming a potential danger to the Habsburg Empire, were not unified by their religion as were the Hungarian Reformed people. The Lutheran Church, for example, had man}’ German and Slovak members. The Reformed Church had virtually none.

However, it was only from an external point of view that the Reformed Church of Hungary looked strong and vigorous at this period of the