The New Hungarian Quarterly, 1991 (32. évfolyam, 123. szám)
THE POLITICAL CLOCK - Majsay Tamás: Protestants under Communism
out strategy, exploited the ecumenical idea and diplomacy as a suitable net allowing it to control inter-denominational affairs, and as an instrument of foreign policy. They soon succeeded in ensuring that in Hungary, as generally in Eastern Europe, ecumenism stood merely for a kind of pseudo-action. Within the country the ecumenical movement, as guided by the Church Affairs Office, rested on two pillars: making a Christian united front impossible on the basis of the divide et impera principle, and also making sure that interdenominational disputes were kept to the minimum desirable level, where they could be easily handled and did not cause any unpredictable surprises to the state. Thus the Church Affairs Office found it difficult to imagine a greater danger than a new denomination with which there were no welloiled contacts and which was perhaps less hierarchical than the existing and known churches. As a result new denominations with a small membership were treated primarily as the concern of the police and the courts, and the old established small denominations were from the start organized under a hierarchical authority which was totally alien to their spirit. It was Church Affairs Office policy to ensure that good relations be maintained at the top, and at the same time to have no contacts whatever and keep a distance between the lower clergy and lay churchmen. What happily coexisted were theatrical ecumenical ceremonies, mutual awards of honorary doctorates, etc. and more or less concealed hostile feelings, never made the subject of open discussion. These included a cunningly stimulated image of the Roman Catholic Church as the enemy. Thus someone who took a leading part in ecumenical activities conducted a secret and provocative survey on Catholic “machinations” related to baptism, or the employment, by the Calvinist Theological Academy, of a vulgarly anti-Catholic—who was anti-Lutheran as well to some degree—as Head of Ecumenic Studies. A propaganda barrage was directed against the various sects (some of them met with feigned friendlines at various ecumenical rituals, and yet one of the questions dealt with by the annual reports based on Calvinist Church minutes referred to the sects, in harmony with the desires of political authority); drawing room antisemitism was tolerated, as was antisemitic theology, the question was deliberately never discussed in a systematic way, etc. Abroad the ecumenical activity of the Protestant churches had to serve the foreign policy of the Hungarian People’s Republic. Indeed for that reason ordinary people showed scant interest in ecumenism, or else rejected it. Ecumenism to them looked just like another version of communist internationalism. In the fifties those active in ecumenism were in the service of the Bolshevik Party itself, and hence worked for the export of the communist world revolution. That was also the task of the Hungarian Church press organ—Ungarischer Kirchlicher Nachrichtendienst, a crudely militant lithographed publication. The Hungarian churches were regularly represented at ecumenical functions by the same tried and tested “comrades”. The same was evident in the church peace movement, in which prominent Hungarian churchmen played a role second only to that of certain hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church. Epilogue B earing in mind the immediate past, a certain cautious optimism appears to be justified in spite of the difficulties. It is up to the churches to encourage forces within them committed to moral and theological renewal which will in turn help mend dramatically damaged structures. The P o litica l C lock 67