wfn.org | Tks Presses Case for Hungarian Reformed Unification

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

25-August-1997 
97319 
 
    Tks Presses Case for Hungarian Reformed Unification 
    in Spite of WARC Opposition 
 
    by Jerry L. Van Marter 
    World Alliance of Reformed Churches Newsroom 
 
DEBRECEN, Hungary--L szl" Tks, the firebrand religious and political 
leader who sparked the freedom movement in Romania in 1989 that some 
believe eventually brought down the Ceausescu regime in Romania, vigorously 
defended efforts he is leading to unite Hungarian Reformed 
Christians in the region into a "megachurch." 
 
    Speaking at a press conference of the 23rd General Council of the World 
Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) Aug. 14, Tks called for WARC to 
"take a resolute stand against any ethnic oppression and to support the 
legal struggle for keeping the people's identity." 
 
    Tks, who is president of the Hungarian Reformed Federation, has 
spearheaded efforts to unite the Hungarian Reformed minorities in a number 
of Central and Eastern European countries into a single transnational 
Hungarian Reformed denomination.  In numerous countries the Hungarian 
Reformed minority faces quite severe discrimination. 
 
    Gusztav Bolsckei, presiding bishop of the Reformed Church in Hungary, 
speaking at the same press conference, said Hungarian-speaking Reformed 
Christians in all the countries of the region "need to maintain connections 
with each other."  But, he continued, such contacts are needed "to 
strengthen our sense of belonging, not to create a superchurch or Hungarian 
hegemony." 
 
    In 1994, WARC criticized the unification movement as an attempt to 
create a church based on ethnic identity rather than on more broadly 
inclusive terms.  Tks and other supporters of the unification effort 
responded defiantly by forming the Consultative Synod of the Hungarian 
Reformed Churches to further their aims. 
 
    Tks today called WARC's opposition "a theological abstraction." 
 
    Not only is the unification effort opposed by WARC on theological 
grounds, its political implications in this fragile region are worrisome to 
many, who believe a transnational Hungarian Reformed Church threatens 
relations between emerging post-Soviet national governments.  Until 1921, 
when it was dismantled in the wake of World War I, the Austro-Hungarian 
empire dominated the region.  Any efforts to reassert Hungarian hegemony in 
the area are viewed with considerable suspicion. 
 
    Asked whether he considered the unification effort to be creating 
"undue tension" in the region, Tks said, "Can we give up on demands in 
order to avoid tensions?  What we seek invariably creates tensions." 
 
    George Ninan, a bishop in the Church of North India and moderator of 
WARC's subsection on national and ethnic identity, also addressing the 
press conference, said the issue of the interrelationship between religious 
groups, ethnic groups and nations is "a global issue."  Noting that more 
than 5,000 distinct ethnic groups in 200 countries have been identified, he 
said "the Christian principle should be the unity in our diversity." 
 
    Ninan lamented that in his country "we have discrimination both inside 
and outside the church," with separate congregations and separate 
cemeteries for different castes as well as discrimination between castes in 
the social order. 
 
    Miroslav Volf, a Croatian theologian who is an adviser to the 
subsection, called the issue of ethnic and national identity "central to 
WARC."  He said breaking chains of injustice, the theme of this 23rd 
General Council, is but one aspect of what needs to be done. 
 
    "We also must create a culture of peace," he explained.  "Yes, we must 
rid our cultures of injustice, but we must also create and shape social 
structures that will allow all cultures to flourish." 
 
    Christians, Volf insisted, "must take care to guard the common 
humanity, especially of our enemy, rather than demonizing."  To be faithful 
to the gospel, he concluded, "means seeing myself through the eye of the 
other." 

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