‘This nest is for all kinds of birds’? National identity questions in the refugee reception of the Reformed Church in Hungary

ABSTRACT

This contribution discusses how concerns over ethnic identity and solidarity shape attitudes towards migration within the Reformed Church in Hungary. Hungary faced an influx of refugees on two occasions in the 1980s and again in 2015, which the Reformed Church responded to very differently. At the end of the 1980s, the drastic deterioration of circumstances in Romania and the forced assimilation of ethnic minorities led to a wave of migration into Hungary. In response, the Reformed Church played a pioneering role in offering relief to refugees. The Church also became involved in the broader political issue of immigration by actively contributing to public debates. During the refugee crisis of 2015, the Church remained divided over the level of support it should offer to people who arrived primarily from the Middle East. Although practical assistance was offered to those in need by the Church’s aid organisation, theologians and church leaders expressed fears about dangers that these refugees might pose to Hungary and to Europe’s perceived Christian identity. This contribution argues that ethnic identity played both a constructive and restrictive role, and that the Church’s distinct responses may be understood as deriving from its ethno-religious self-identification.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• national identity
• Reformed Church
• ethnicity
• Hungary

Introduction

Hungarian attitudes to migration seemed to be predominantly negative during the crisis of 2015: as thousands of people bound for Germany travelled through Hungary, the feeling was perhaps that Hungary had too little autonomy in determining whom to help and on which conditions. Images of confrontations at the border consolidated this negative impression. However, much debate was stirred within Hungarian society, and including in one of its established churches, the Reformed Church in Hungary, with particular reference to the migration of Hungarian refugees to the West after the 1956 revolution. As László Surján, a former member of the Hungarian government, a prominent politician of the Christian Democratic People’s Party of Hungary, and former member of the European Parliament, wrote reflecting on the reception of the 1956 Hungarian refugees by Western European countries:

Let’s face it, the culture of the countries of our region is woven from the same fabric as yours [i.e. of Western Europe], even if the patterns and colours are different from one place to another. The 1956 Hungarian exodus should not be confused with today’s migration for several reasons. There were no pseudo-refugees among them who wanted to destroy the host country, or to drive it into fear.¹

Another wave of migration occurred in the 1980s, when Hungary received Hungarian, Romanian, and German refugees from Romania. This wave of migration did not occupy a prominent space in the public imagination in 2015. In the 1980s, however, both the Reformed Church and the state expressed a positive attitude towards the refugees and offered various types of support, chiefly on the basis of solidarity between ethnic Hungarians. These pro-refugee initiatives garnered popular support. The situation in 2015 was, however, different: the refugees of 2015 arrived from predominantly non-European, Muslim societies. This time, the Church reflected the position of the Orbán government with a negative attitude towards non-European, and especially Muslim migration. This attitude has been criticised as discriminatory, Islamophobic, and racist. Although this criticism may not be altogether wrong, it is important to engage more deeply with the discussions that are internal to Hungary.

This contribution analyses the reactions of the Reformed Church in Hungary to the two most recent episodes of migration into Hungary: the influx of Romanian refugees in the 1980s and the European refugee crisis of 2015.² As we will see, the Reformed Church responded very differently to these two waves of migration. In 1987, it was Reverend Géza Németh who took the initiative to support refugees from Romania. He had been dismissed from his ministry on account of his dissent, but managed to continue his ministry on an informal basis. Within a year, the Reformed Church extended Németh’s initiative and offered widespread assistance to refugees from Romania, irrespective of their ethnicity as there were indigenous ethnic Hungarians, Saxons, and Romanians among the refugees. Moreover, the Reformed Church took a firm pro-migration stance in the media as well. In 2015, when Hungary faced a new wave of refugees from the Middle East and Africa, the support was much more modest. The Hungarian government believed these people threatened both Hungarian identity and European values. The government attempted to contain the wave of refugees through limiting access to asylum, as well as by erecting fences along the national border. In this time of crisis, the Reformed Church remained relatively silent. Unlike the 1980s, it did not provide a theologically-supported statement on the reception of refugees, however it did offer aid to people in need.

These different reactions of the Reformed Church to the two refugee crises raise some important questions, namely, why the Church did not offer the same kind of theological and practical support to refugees in 1988 and in 2015, and what role ethnicity played in the distinction between European and non-European identities. Answering these questions may assist us in understanding how the issue of national identity influences the nature and mission of the Reformed Church. This contribution first describes the reasons for and process of the refugee crisis at the end of the 1980s, relying on academic sources, especially the recent PhD dissertation of the Hungarian historian Veronika Kaszás ‘Transylvanian Refugees in Hungary’ (Kaszás 2015), as well as on primary sources, including contemporary media reports. It elaborates on forms of assistance that the Reformed Church offered and how these evolved from 1987 onwards. The second part of the contribution deals with the reaction of the Reformed Church to the refugee crisis of 2015 in its theological reflections and its practical work, and argues that while an emphasis on national identity may contribute to healing processes in the post-Trianon³ Carpathian Basin, the Church’s emphasis on national identity presents an obstacle to the provision of hospitality towards non-European refugees.

Refugees from Romania to Hungary at the end of the 1980s

The large indigenous Hungarian minority that resided in Romania as a result of the Treaty of Trianon came under pressure in the second half of the 1980s under the influence of Romanian nationalism. Not only were living standards declining, the increasing pressure to assimilate spilled into the violation of human rights (Romsics 2003, 364), and even cultural genocide (Ara-Kovács et al. 1988, 57). During the last years under Ceaușescu, this included violent repression and imprisonment of Hungarian dissidents, but also forced resettlement. For example, the vast majority of ethnic Hungarian intellectuals and professionals in Transylvania were forced to resettle in predominantly Romanian areas (Ara-Kovács et al. 1988, 69). By the late 1980s, education in the Hungarian language was almost exclusively limited to the primary school level, which led to a drastic reduction in the publication of Hungarian literature in Romania (Ara-Kovács et al. 1988, 88–93). As a pastor of the Hungarian-speaking Reformed Church in Romania, László Tőkés together with colleagues encouraged the Church leadership to raise its voice against the urban planning policy (Tőkés 2022, 202–207). Among other issues, Tőkés also strongly criticised Romanian language politics which created disadvantage for the Hungarian minority (Tőkés 2020, 124–129). As John Eibner (1987, 204) summarised at the time: ‘ … the Hungarian population of Romania faces special disadvantages. For the past thirty years the Romanian government appears to have been working towards the creation of a unitary state based on the Romanian language and national traditions’. Citing a 1986 report by the US Helsinki Watch Committee, Eibner noted that ‘the Hungarian language, churches and schools are being “systematically eliminated” by means of “discriminating and sometimes brutal practices”. The Romanian state’s vehement hostility towards religion means that Hungarian believers – most of whom belong to the Reformed and Roman Catholics churches – suffer a double disadvantage’ (Eibner 1987, 204).

The position of ethnic Hungarians in Romania became one of the most important areas of Hungarian national and international policy. Although Hungary had taken a conflict-avoiding approach (an approach that was associated with the Hungarian communist leader János Kádár), the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party departed from it (Földes 2021, 263). Historian György Földes offers three reasons for this significant domestic political turn. First, he argues that the great deterioration of the situation of Hungarians in Romania could not be ignored by Hungary’s political leadership. Public opinion in Hungary led Hungary’s political elite to respond more strongly to the events across the border. The second reason is the significance of Romanian nation-building and nationalism, which went hand in hand with the negation of Hungarian history and national consciousness, and the one-sided reassessment of the past (from a Hungarian perspective). The third reason is that the deterioration of the internal political situation in Hungary made it necessary for Hungary’s political leadership to focus on the protection of Hungarian interests beyond its borders (Földes 2021, 263).

During the final years of Ceaușescu’s dictatorship in Romania,⁴ at the end of the 1980s, a wave of refugees began to arrive in Hungary. According to national statistics, around 40,000 people arrived in Hungary between January 1988 and December 1990. Three-quarters of them were Hungarians, but a significant proportion were not: about a fifth were Romanian, and the rest were German or of other nationalities (c.f. Kaszás 2015, 177). According to the statistics of a Lutheran church in Budapest that offered support to refugees, 79% of the people they helped were ethnic Hungarians, 17% were Romanians, and 4% were Germans (Regényi and Törzsök 1988, 178–181). Statistics on Hungarian refugees show that as far as religious affiliation is concerned, 51% were Reformed and 43% were Roman Catholic (Sik 1996, 519). Romanians from Romania were mostly Orthodox, and Germans were mostly Roman Catholic or Lutheran.⁵ Some of these refugees considered Hungary a land of transition and intended to move to Western Europe, as approximately 5,000 did, however, most refugees stayed in Hungary. They may have found some economic and political security there, and many of them qualified for Hungarian citizenship. Some refugees came with passports or travel permits, but a considerable number of refugees arrived undocumented (Pánczél 2010, 20).

There was significant public interest in these refugees, not least because of political issues that had remained taboo during the Communist dictatorship in Hungary: the question of national minorities, the relationship with Hungarians living outside the border, as well as the issue of solidarity and migration within the socialist bloc (c.f. Magyar Hírlap 1989a; 3; Kaszás 2015, 181). The percentage of the population which supported the acceptance of refugees grew over the course of 1988: in April 1988 it was 62%, and by the end of 1988 about 80% of the Hungarian population supported the acceptance of these refugees (Kaszás 2015, 183). An important sign of support was the demonstration at the Heroes Square in Budapest on 27 June 1988, where tens of thousands gathered together to express their opposition to Ceaușescu’s systematisation or urban planning policy (Ablonczy 2020, 313). One of the main arguments for welcoming refugees pertained to ethnic identity: most refugees were ethnic Hungarians indigenous in Romania, and therefore their reception was considered a national obligation. Another argument was that the violation of human rights and severe economic circumstances in Romania warranted support for these refugees, which is a more general humanitarian argument. Only a minority of Hungarians disagreed, perhaps out of anxiety over what the influx of a large group of refugees would mean for the country. They feared that the Hungarian economy was not strong enough to support them. Some were also afraid of losing their jobs. Others argued that Romanian problems should be solved in Romania, and that victims should not be leaving their country (Kaszás 2015, 183).

During the 1980s, this political attitude was slowly changing: an important moment was the radio interview with Mátyás Szűrös, foreign affairs secretary of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, on 25 January 1988. In this interview, Szűrös argued that ethnic Hungarians beyond Hungarian borders were part of the Hungarian nation (Kaszás 2016). Szokai and Tabajdi, deputy heads of the Foreign Affairs Department of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, said: ‘in recent years, the party and the government have increasingly undertaken to monitor the fate and concerns of Hungarians living in neighbouring countries and to represent their interests’ (Szokai and Tabajdi 1988, 11). This open concern about Hungarian minorities created a relatively fertile space for discussions about refugees from Romania, and practical support that might be offered. It is no coincidence that Hungary was the first socialist country to join the 1951 Refugee Convention in March 1989, especially as this Convention created a legal basis for protections offered to refugees, albeit with the explicit caveat that it would only apply to European refugees (Múlt-kor 2021).

In this context, informal and spontaneous forms of social care for refugees emerged within the wider context of the Reformed Church (Sik 1989, 35). Most notable in this regard was Pastor Géza Németh, who was mentioned in the introduction. After his dismissal in 1971 – he had started to build a church without permission from the state and had criticised the church’s leadership – his ministry had moved underground (Punger 1992, 23–24).⁶ As part of this clandestine ministry, Pastor Németh had already started a project for victims of drug abuse in a basement room in Buda, and he decided to open this space for incoming refugees (Kaszás 2012). He put up a sign on the basement door, inviting refugees for tea and Bible study (Pánczél 2010, 10).⁷ In the autumn of 1987, he welcomed the first three refugees, and by Christmas that year the number had increased to about 300. The project soon outgrew the small Buda basement room. In response to the need to provide more robust support for refugees, the then presiding bishop of the Reformed Church, Károly Tóth, assigned a building for the Reformed refugee mission and included support for the refugees in the official programme of the Church (Mező 1990; 10–11; Franka n.d., 20).

Németh’s initiative, which eventually grew into The Island of Hope (Reménység Szigete) project, was only the beginning of the Reformed Church’s engagement with refugees from Romania. It led to the formation of the Transylvanian Congregation, which is still active,⁸ and from February 1988 the synod of the Reformed Church entrusted the Budapest church of Rákosszentmihály-Sashalom, one of the city’s suburban churches, as the official venue for ‘accepting, helping, and guiding Romanian refugees’ (Pánczél 2010, 11). From then on, the mission built on the work of several Reformed pastors: Tivadar Pánczél was appointed to be the head of the mission while his colleagues – except Németh – came from the Synodal Office of the Church: Attila Komlós, chief editor of Reformátusok Lapja (Newspaper of the Reformed), the Church’s weekly paper; Bertalan Tamás, who was the head of the Department for Foreign Affairs of the Synodal Office of the Reformed Church; and Sándor Tenke, the chief editor of the Reformed journal Confessio. On 6 March 1988 the Reformed Church issued a formal statement in Reformátusok Lapja, requesting support for the refugees regardless of their ethnic background, based on the biblical command of Matthew 25:35–40:

It is a well-known fact that an increasing number of Romanian citizens, mostly Hungarians from Transylvania, are applying to the Hungarian authorities to settle in Hungary. […] We believe it is our Christian and national duty to provide everything we can to those who knock on the doors of our churches and congregations and ask for our help in dealing with their official affairs, accommodation and work problems, and last but not least, to seek the comfort of the Gospel.⁹

Engagement with the refugee community was not solely based on spiritual need. Refugees were offered food, clothing, legal advice, and medical support. The centre also functioned as an employment bureau, assisting refugees in finding jobs and in facilitating processes of integration. ‘The Church tries to provide accommodation, work, clothing, food, and even help those without money’ (Tenke 1988, 108), said Pastor Pánczél. During a radio interview, broadcast in the Hungarian Radio programme called Sunday Newspaper (Vasárnapi újság) on 28 February 1988, Attila Komlós spoke about the different types of support which were provided to refugees irrespective of their ethnicity:

We can help them with their paperwork, identify and forward job opportunities, and find accommodation through our congregations and priests. Several motivations drive the Church, Christians: to help our neighbour in distress. This is the first and most important motivation. Regardless of the nationality of the person, regardless of the country to which he belongs, regardless of what motivated him to come to us, we feel it is in our faith that we must help the person who knocks on our door and asks us for help.¹⁰

These forms of support were offered to both legal and illegal refugees, which indicates that the Church was guided more by its own religious principles and vision than by state perspectives on migration. ‘We receive them with the wisdom and strength of love, because we want to show an example of reconciliation and brotherhood’, claimed Reformed Pastor Tivadar Pánczél, director of the Transylvanian refugee aid project in the Budapest suburb of Rákosszentmihály (Pánczél 2010, 20).

This holistic perspective on charity was indeed guided by profoundly religious convictions. On the first so-called ‘Transylvanian spiritual retreat day’, Géza Németh led the closing act of worship and preached on Matthew 13:31–32. He talked about the unfolding of the Kingdom of God and identified a particular instance of growth among Hungarians and Eastern Europeans. In his sermon, he described the work of helping refugees from Romania as an ecumenically open mission: it was a voluntary cooperation in which people ecumenically ‘complemented’ one another, where everybody attended their own church services on Sunday, but understood that they belonged together in the greater picture of World Christianity. He argued: ‘This nest is for all kinds of birds, not even a denominational background is a condition of belonging’ (Pánczél 2010, 26). Though the mission may have encouraged migration from Romania, Pastor Pánczél (2010, 28) emphasised that it was never the intention of the Reformed Church in Hungary to encourage that:

We agreed that we have to receive everyone with good words and helping hands but in a way that would not inspire a dream in those who stayed at home and that would not seduce them into lightly leaving their motherland behind.

Even though Romanians and Germans were offered the same help as ethnic Hungarians, support for refugees was primarily inspired by a commitment to Hungarian solidarity, and many emphasised the need for ethnic solidarity and cohesion. ‘If someone came over, we have to convey for them a feeling of brotherhood as we are all Hungarians’, said Pastor Tivadar Pánczél (Pánczél 2010, 28). There was a strong commitment to the vision of Hungarians belonging together within the same state territory that was occupied by common ancestors some thousand years ago, and which had been disrupted by the border revisions of Trianon. There was strong opposition to the migration of ethnic Hungarians to other places in the world in order to keep the members of the nation together in one place: ‘We must convince those who wish to travel to the West not to do so because this would be equal to scattering’ (Pánczél 2010, 28). This vision was supported by theological considerations, as some of the Reformed leaders saw the redeeming and restitutive hand of God in this solidarity: ‘We agreed that our work receiving and supporting the refugees is not simply humanitarian work. It is a humble – though for us a most important – service of God’s redeeming and restitutive work’ (Pánczél 2010, 28). Even when certain security concerns were raised,¹¹ the support continued.

This rhetoric of ethnic solidarity, however, was not without its discontents. In 1989, a pivotal year in the history of modern Hungary, criticism had built up in parts of Hungarian society. Some Hungarians were afraid ‘to be cut out of their place’: that they would somehow lose their economic security due to the high number of refugees coming to the country. Pánczél, who sought to dissolve doubts and to counter hostile sentiments which had spread among the Hungarian population, found it important to ‘explain to the inhabitants of Hungary that the newcomers do not cut anyone out of their place’ (Pánczél 2010, 20). As Kaszás argues, Hungarians were afraid that the economic situation would not allow for helping refugees (Kaszás 2015, 183). At that time, Pánczél became increasingly worried about the language of refugees being ‘enemies’, which contributed to both hatred and anxiety. He believed that this rhetoric was borne out of economic anxieties (Pánczél 2010, 33).

In an open letter to the president of the governmental inter-ministerial committee on refugee issues, Pánczél urged faster action by the state in handling the challenges that refugees faced in Hungary (Magyar Hírlap 1989b, 3). Reformed Pastor Bertalan Tamás claimed that the Reformed Church was the first to offer help to the refugees of 1987–1988, referring to the dedication of a Budapest suburb church for the refugee mission (Magyar Hírlap 1989a, 3). One of the former bishops of the Reformed Church, István Szabó, talked about solidarity created by the love of God and people that took up the cause of the needy irrespective of their denominational background during the Transylvanian refugee crisis (Pánczél 2010, 3). He called the refugee support provided by the Church at the end of the 1980s a worthy example of patriotism as it supported Hungarian compatriots living outside of Hungary’s national borders: ‘ … they belong to us, we belong together’ (Pánczél 2010, 3).

However, although ethnic solidarity among Hungarians was a major motivation for welcoming refugees from the neighbouring country of Romania at the end of the 1980s, support was offered irrespective of denominational and, by implication, ethnic identity. As we can see from the above, the Reformed Church – both in its official communications and in its missionary practice – placed emphasis on welcoming everyone independent of ethnic belonging. Romanians, ethnic Germans, and ethnic Hungarians were equally supported by the Reformed Church and received help in order to integrate into Hungarian society.

This relatively favourable approach also expressed itself in the language that was used with reference to refugees: the Hungarian word used in the 1980s was menekült,¹² which signifies that someone is a refugee. In 2015, by contrast, the language would shift to migráns, which describes foreigners intending to relocate to Hungary primarily for non-urgent reasons.

The 2015 ‘migrant crisis’ in Europe

Whereas ethnicity seems to have played a largely constructive role in the care for refugees from Romania in the 1980s, the issue of ethnicity became rather divisive during the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe. The war in Syria, as well as continuing unrest in Iraq and Afghanistan, triggered a wave of migration, leading to the arrival of around 1.3 million refugees in Europe in 2015 (Pew Research Center 2016). Whereas some countries, like Germany, received large numbers of refugees, criticism of migration became an important characteristic of right-wing populist discourse in Hungary. Moreover, the Hungarian government disapproved of the European quota system that asked each of the Member States to share in the duty of care towards refugees. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán defended this stance with (among other arguments) a reference to European Christianity and to nation-states, which in his words, are grounded ethnically:

We are facing a challenge that is no less than that of implementing a conscious, left-wing intellectual construct that seeks to put nation-states in Europe on the backburner. Not only have they not been able to come to terms with Christianity and the identity of nation-states, or with the values and responsibilities that derive from them, in the world of traditional political struggle, they now seek to erode the ethnic foundations thereof. This is the sad truth. This is treason, Ladies and Gentlemen! Europe has been betrayed, and if we do not stand up for it, this Europe will be taken from us.¹³

Orbán’s comments show two sides of the same coin: on the one hand he affirmed the positive obligation towards ethnic Hungarians and the idea of Christian Europe in general, on the other hand, his attitude towards non-European refugees has been consistently negative. This is compounded by legislative change, which enables Hungarians living in neighbouring countries to obtain extra-territorial citizenship and thereby, suffrage since 2010 (comp. Kiss 2019, 186–233). These aspects are echoed in the focus on Hungarian nationhood in the Reformed Church. For example, the Church created a new synodal bond of unity in 2009 with Hungarian Reformed churches in the diaspora. This included Hungarian Reformed churches in Transcarpathia (Ukraine), Vojvodina (Serbia), Transylvania (Romania), and Partium (Romania). Its ecclesial constitution (Chapter 1, §1.2) stated:

Member churches of the Hungarian Reformed Church live in synodal unity, based on identical creed, teaching and traditions. They form an ecclesiastical and spiritual community in faith and love with all Hungarian-speaking Reformed churches, and cherish brotherhood with the Reformed churches from all around the world.¹⁴

The leaders behind the unification process of the Hungarian Reformed churches believed they shared a certain vision of unity with the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC), with other Protestant churches in Europe, and with the global church. The Reformed Church demonstrates its belief in and commitment to the universal church, not only in its creeds, but also in its national and international ecumenical engagements: it is a member of the World Council of Churches, the World Communion of Reformed Churches, the Conference of European Churches, the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe and other international organisations. But part of this ecumenical vision is a responsibility for refugees. In the words of the WCRC Europe: ‘The people seeking refuge are not merely an ethical or political challenge confronting the Church. They challenge our Churches in their innermost theological identity and mission’ (World Communion of Reformed Churches 2016). The Reformed Church in Hungary, however, remained ambivalent during the refugee crisis of 2015. The Church initially provided relief, but it eventually followed the government’s negative approach to the refugee crisis. This raises questions about the priority of ethnic Hungarian identity, and the Church’s relationship with the ecumenical transcendence of ethnic differences.

The initial response of the Reformed Church to the arrival of refugees in 2015 was to engage in work to help refugees integrate into Hungarian society. Among other activities, they provided after-school programmes, Hungarian language courses, and a housing programme. Many of these had been in place long before 2015. Its Refugee Mission had been founded in 2003, the year before Hungary joined the European Union. Moreover, the Hungarian Reformed Church Aid organisation also supported refugees through the provision of medical help for those staying in a refugee camp in Debrecen, and through running youth programmes. In September 2015, when a particularly high number of refugees arrived in Hungary, they distributed food, water, and basic hygiene products at the Keleti railway station in Budapest, where several hundred refugees had been stranded for a long period of time. At the Croatian-Hungarian border, they provided food and blankets in collaboration with a local Reformed congregation and a secondary school (Reformed Church in Hungary 2015b).

While the Reformed Church affirms care for refugees as part of its core mission, the Church remained ambivalent in its articulation of a robust theological position on the refugee crisis of 2015. The Church did not issue an official statement as it did in the 1980s, although it published reports as well as news about the work of international faith-based organisations on its online platform www.reformatus.hu. In the words of Catholic theologian Marcell Mártonffy:

It is indispensable that the church articulates its position regarding migrants in an official document that is available to all and which can be referenced. It is not possible to cut the discourse short by saying that the teaching of the church is clear. This is evasive, as many believers do not connect the clear-cut teachings of either the Bible or the present pope to concrete situations. Exactly this mediation should be the permanent task of church leadership (Fülöp and Teczár 2015).

Though the Reformed Church gave no official statement about the refugee issue, individual voices within the Church spoke out. However, the published opinions of bishops, deputy bishops, theologians, and ministers tended to contradict each other.

The presiding bishop István Szabó of the Reformed Church stated in July 2015 that the primary task of the state was to care about and protect its citizens, while ordinary people were to obey the biblical command and open their doors and let the refugees in (Reformed Church in Hungary 2015a). A couple of months later, László Köntös, another Reformed deputy bishop, said that ‘the uncontrolled admission of the flow of migrants from a different culture endangers European identity’ (Szőnyi 2015). He wrote this as part of his response to the weekly paper Heti Válasz (Weekly Answer), which had asked the churches what their position was on the refugee crisis. László Köntös was the only member of the Reformed clergy who answered this question. Andrea Krasznai, who worked at the Budapest airport chaplaincy, argued that migration implied higher security risks for Europe. In her opinion, migration would be a growing threat on account of alleged associations with aggression and terrorism. She also stated that terrorists could hide among undocumented migrants in order to enter Europe, and that, under the current regulations, even Osama bin Laden could possibly reach Brussels, Paris, and London and sow hatred aimed against the West (Krasznai 2015). In contrast with these statements, leaders of the Refugee Mission of the Reformed Church explained, with reference to Somalia, that the fact that some migrants were undocumented itself indicated that there were legitimate reasons for their migration (Sindelyes 2015).

In response to the quota system that was introduced by the European Union, the Hungarian government organised a referendum in 2016 on the reception of refugees in Hungary. This referendum might have given cause to the Reformed Church to speak out, but again, the Church did not issue a substantive official statement on the refugee question as such, and neither did it give clear direction to its ministers or to other members of the Church on how to understand the refugee crisis from a specifically religious perspective. This appeared to be out of step with anxieties that manifested in grassroots congregations, where there was fear over potential terrorist attacks, loss of jobs or social benefits, growth of violence, and possible long-term threats to customs and traditions, which some feared would bring significant change to ‘our way of life’. Such fears were actively stoked by communications from the government. Whilst this fear did not necessarily imply the rejection of refugees, it certainly fuelled ambivalence. One Reformed minister stated that he was convinced that it would be his Christian obligation to help refugees, but also that he was afraid for the future of his children, the Hungarian nation, and Christian Europe (Reformed Church in Hungary 2015b).

In mid-September 2016, the Presidency Council of the Reformed Church issued a 74-word statement on the referendum, which was published on the official website of the Reformed Church. In this statement, the Presidency Council urged members of the Reformed Church to take part in the referendum, with reference to the autonomy of the Hungarian nation and basic values of democracy. At the same time, the Presidency Council encouraged people to consider their vote very carefully since, as they stated, the decision was about the future of one’s children and grandchildren, about the future of the country and the future of Christian values: ‘We ask everyone to be informed about the referendum question, to consider that it is not about your current situation, but about the future of your children and grandchildren, the fate of your country, and Christian values’ (Reformed Church in Hungary 2016). This statement was significant, because political parties and civil organisations that campaigned for the rights of refugees had advised people not to participate in the referendum so as to render it invalid (which was ultimately the case).

When approached by the online news portal Index.hu, the Reformed Church declined to respond to the question: ‘Do you want the European Union to be able to mandate the obligatory resettlement of non-Hungarian citizens into Hungary even without the approval of the National Assembly?’ (Rovó 2016). In August 2015, the weekly liberal magazine Magyar Narancs (Hungarian Orange) posed the question of why the churches were so silent on the ‘migrant’ issue, pointing out that the churches in Hungary were very hesitant to oppose the government’s hate campaign against refugees (Fülöp and Teczár 2015). When the magazine asked opinions of nine religious organisations in Hungary about the border closures, the government’s poster campaign, and the tasks of the churches regarding the migration issue, only two of them issued a reply: the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities and the Hungarian Islamic Community. They talked about the donations they had raised to help refugees. The Reformed Church’s excuse for failing to answer the questions was that their leaders were on holiday (Fülöp and Teczár 2015). The website of the Refugee Mission of the Reformed Church had not been updated since September 2014, and thus, no information was available about its work in 2015 and after. The website of the Reformed Church Aid organisation published information about their practical work to help refugees in July 2015 (one press release) and September 2015 (five press releases). This was followed by only one press release in October 2016, which announced that the organisation had received a ministerial award from the government for its humanitarian work during the refugee crisis.

While in the 1980s issues around ethnicity worked as a positive force to help the process of welcoming people in need from Romania, ethnicity became an issue during the 2015 refugee crisis. The state and the Reformed Church both expressed fears about refugees who arrived from the Middle East and Africa, emphasising the risks these people might pose to Europe, including the long-term loss of Christian Europe. Although ethnic belonging was a strong motivation for unification, differences in ethnicity gave rise to a hostile approach to the refugee crisis of 2015.

Ethnicity, nation, and the mission of the Reformed Church in Hungary

Between the two distinct waves of migration of the 1980s and of 2015, it appears that ethnicity played a significant role in shaping the mission of the Reformed Church in Hungary, both positively and negatively. Although ethnicity did not play a prominent role in the 1980s, ideas about ethnic solidarity certainly contributed to the Church’s positive engagement with refugees from Romania. This ethnic solidarity was further expressed in the Church’s efforts to strengthen transnational relationships with Hungarian Reformed churches in the diaspora, and especially in the context of the Reformed ‘unification’ of 2009. The contrast with 2015 is significant in that missionary activities to support refugees took place outside of a larger theological framework, or a coherent theological vision on the migration crisis. This raises questions about the Church’s perspective on ethnic identity, as well as the possible priority of ethnic belonging over religious belonging. In accordance with the theorisation of the sociologist Gülay Türkmen, this priority could be understood as an instance of ethno-religious nationalism. Ethno-religious nationalism signifies and affirms the importance of both ethnicity and religion to the issue of belonging, while acknowledging that ethnic belonging might take precedence over religious belonging (Türkmen 2021, 101–134). Although her analysis applies to Turkey, her theorisation is helpful: ethno-religious nationalism in the Reformed Church in Hungary might signify that both ethnic and religious identity shape its identity, but that eventually ethnic belonging might be prioritised over religious – and even denominational – belonging.

The Reformed Church has been an important factor in Hungarian collective memory. For example, the Reformed Church was an anchoring point during the Ottoman occupation in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, as well as the resettlements of the eighteenth century (Bertényi and Gyapay 1995, 289). The teachings of the Reformation became so popular among Hungarians that by the eighteenth century, most Hungarian-speaking inhabitants belonged to the Reformed Church (Bertényi and Gyapay 1995; 305; Nemeskürty 1993, 237). Hungarian ethnic identity and Reformed religious identity coincided in the major part of the Hungarian-speaking population of that time. After the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, when Hungary lost around two-thirds of its population, for Hungarians who became citizens of Romania and other neighbouring countries religion became an extremely strong factor in the preservation of Hungarian identity, as the Church provided the opportunity to use the Hungarian language and culture. Kovács calls attention to the danger that in such a situation Christian identity can be dissolved in national identity (Kovács 2018, 138).

From a religious perspective, ethno-religious nationalism might be at odds with the mission of the Church in the context of unity, ecumenism, and its international participation in associations of churches. Belgian theologian Van der Borght argues that this may be a challenge for churches in many different contexts. Examining the nature of the ecumenical work done in the twentieth century, he argues that a strong commitment to nation-states could imply a threat to the theological vocation of Christian unity:

For many Orthodox and Protestant churches the links with their nation-states were strong, self-evident, and believed to be fundamental, and for this reason difficult to question. The threat that they pose for the unity of the church is also of a theological nature (van der Borght 2011, 432).

Van der Borght explains that the ecumenical work done on the matter of Christian unity relied on confessional points of view (van der Borght 2011, 431–432). The underlying conviction was that overcoming confessional differences would lead to Christian unity. That is, if denominations could agree on aspects of their faith – and that was the work of many bilateral and multilateral programmes of dialogue – the unity of the church could perhaps be embodied. However, the past century has also revealed that commitments to national and ethnic identities have divided churches across the world. It appears that ecumenical theology suffers from a lack of awareness concerning the role of sociocultural identities in understanding churches and denominations, and especially in how these identities influence ideas about the mission of the church. The now twenty-year-old World Council of Churches Commission on Faith and Order project Ethnic Identity, National Identity and the Search for the Unity of the Church dealt with these important issues, but it did not much influence the Faith and Order committee’s documents on ecclesiology,¹⁵ even if ‘ecclesiologies tempted by ethnic particularisms’ (Mateus 2016) are in theory recognised by committee members. More ecumenical reflection is warranted, and needed, on the topic of unity from the perspective of ethnic and national identities.

In the context of Hungary, the Reformed Church’s emphasis on ethnic solidarity among Hungarians in the region may be a particular obstacle to reconciliation between ethnic communities in Central and Eastern Europe, even as this solidarity may come with clear benefits for ethnic Hungarian populations outside Hungary. The contrast between ethnic Hungarian solidarity and the Church’s ambivalence, and even negative attitude, towards non-European ethnicities is pronounced. It is essential to both Hungarian Reformed theology and to global ecumenical efforts that the Reformed Church in Hungary reflects on the interplay of its twofold identity: to be Christian (Reformed) and to be Hungarian. One of these identities pulls the community towards transnational and global dialogue, while the other implies division, through its emphasis on specific national traditions, customs, and language. National identity means a very strong challenge to Christian unity that manifests itself in Hungarian society and in the Church, predominantly through fear and the rejection of the stranger, the one with the unknown religion, another ethnicity, and potentially, another ‘race’.¹⁶

Conclusion

Having analysed the position of the Reformed Church of Hungary in relation to migration from Romania in the 1980s and the refugee crisis of 2015, it appears that ethnicity and sociocultural identity profoundly shape how the Church understands itself in its social and political role. Moreover, ethnic identity can play both a constructive and restrictive role. In the 1980s, the Church’s pioneering role in the reception of refugees from Romania was inspired by ethnic solidarity, primarily with ethnic Hungarians from Romania. At the time the Church was highly involved in the formation of public opinion, and especially by voicing a pro-refugee stance in the media which was shaped by theological reflection. In contrast, the Church remained ambivalent and at times silent during the 2015 refugee crisis. Eventually, the Church’s historical interest in refugee relief was overshadowed by a prioritising of the Church’s ethnic anchoring, a rejection of refugees as Muslim, and the assertion of Europe’s Christian identity. These concerns explicitly reflected right-wing political discourse in Hungary, and perhaps came at the expense of proper theological reflection on both the refugee crisis of 2015 and national identity. There may be compelling theological grounds to critically consider this prioritisation of ethnicity with respect to the ethno-religious othering of Muslims, as well as to the transnational and trans-ethnic character of the church in its ‘universal’ or ecumenical conception. Attenuating the ethnic dimension to the Church’s self-identification might very well be needed to revive the Church’s politically distinctive voice as a critical partner of Hungarian civil society and of the state.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fondation pour l’aide au protestantisme réformé.

Notes on contributors

Viktória Kóczián

Viktória Kóczián is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Religion and Theology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her research interests include ecclesiology, theologies of migration, church history under communism and Hungarian Protestantism in dictatorship and democracy.

Notes

1. László Surján, ‘Felelet Timmermans biztos úrnak’. [A reply to Mr. Timmermans, member of the European Commission], 9 July 2017. Available online at https://www.magyaridok.hu/velemeny/felelet-timmermans-biztos-urnak-1921621/Last accessed on 15 August 2022. ‘Szögezzük le, a mi régiónk országainak kultúráját ugyanabból a szövetből szőtték, mint az önökét, ha mások is a minták és a színek az egyik helyen, mint a másikon. Az 1956-os magyar menekülést több okból nem lehet összekeverni a mai migrációval. Nem voltak köztük álmenekültek, akik a befogadó országot akarták volna tönkre tenni, félelembe kergetni’. (Original Hungarian text).

2. No ethical approval was required for this article.

3. After the First World War the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary was redefined by the Paris Peace Conference. The peace treaty was signed in 1920 in the Grand Trianon palace of Versailles, that is why it is referred to as the ‘Trianon Peace Treaty’ in Hungary.

4. Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989) was the general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989. He ruled the country as a dictator, from 1967 as the president of the State Council, from 1974 to 1989 as the president of the state. He was removed from office and executed during the Romanian Revolution in 1989.

5. The questionnaire survey covered only refugees of Hungarian origin. The data for the survey were collected in March 1989, when there were about 13,000 Romanian refugees in Hungary. For the denominational affiliation of Romanian citizens living in Romania at the time, the Romanian census of 1992 might serve as a guide. According to the census, 95% of Romanians were Orthodox, 60% of Germans were Roman Catholic and 23% of Germans followed the Lutheran tradition. Cf.: Varga E., Árpád ([1998] 1999). Hungarians in Transylvania between 1870 and 1995. ‘Supplementary Tables’. See Table 8: The population of Romania according to nationality compared with denomination at the time of the 1992 census. Last accessed 22 October 2022. http://www.kia.hu/konyvtar/erdely/supplem.htm.

6. Pastor Géza Németh (1933–1995) was dismissed from the clergy of the RCH as a consequence of a show trial in 1971. He would be rehabilitated only in 1989. Despite the court’s decision, Németh never ceased his pastoral work and he remained an active servant of what he called the ‘underground church’ during the 1970s and 1980s. However, even after the rehabilitation, he was never elected to be a pastor of a congregation in the RCH. See e.g. Miért fontos … az egyházi jövőkép? Németh Géza a református megújulásért. Budapest: Méry Ratio, 2013, edited by the heirs of Géza Németh.

7. Drug addiction was another taboo topic in Hungary during socialist times.

8. The Erdélyi Gyülekezet (Transylvanian Congregation) was born in 1990 from the refugees that arrived in Hungary. This church still actively supported refugees in 2015. In September 2015, the Transylvanian Congregation decided that it was its Christian duty to help people in need, whether they were Hungarian farmers in Vojvodina who had suffered damage or people on the move. The congregation pledged one tenth of its annual budget to this end. They visited refugee camps, helped refugees with warm clothes and financial support. See https://erdelyigyulekezet.hu/magyar-tamogatas-a-szerbiai-migranskrizisben/. Last accessed on 23 October 2022.

9. All quotations are translated by the author.

10. ‘A Romániából Áttelepülteket Segítő Szolgálat munkájáról készített riportot Trebitsch Péter Komlós Attila lelkésszel 5.40. 1988’. Broadcast in Vasárnapi újság II/9, 28. 02. 1988. (Hungarian Radio programme ‘Sunday Newspaper’). Author’s own transcription and translation.

11. Pánczél mentions their concern about the possibility that plastic explosives might have been used against them in the gatherings (Pánczél 2010, 23).

12. All the Hungarian language sources of this paper use the word ‘menekült’.

13. ‘Nem kevesebb és nem kisebb kihívás előtt állunk, mint egy tudatos, baloldalinak mondható szellemi konstrukció megvalósításának a kapujában, ami a nemzetállamokat Európában zárójelbe akarja tenni, és ha már a kereszténységgel és a nemzetállami identitással, az abból fakadó értékekkel és felelősséggel nem tudott megbirkózni a hagyományos politikai küzdelem világában, most ennek az etnikai alapjait kívánja fölszámolni. Ez a szomorú igazság. Árulás van, tisztelt Hölgyeim és Uraim! Európát elárulták, és ha nem állunk ki érte, akkor ezt az Európát el fogják tőlünk venni’. (Original Hungarian text) Orbán, Viktor. 2015. Speech of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at the conference of the Alliance of Christian Intellectuals of Hungary. Last accessed on 7 January 2022. https://2010–2015.miniszterelnok.hu/beszed/orban_viktor_beszede_az_idok_jelei_vitairat_bemutatasak.

14. Constitution of the Hungarian Reformed Church (2009). Available online in Hungarian here: https://reformatus.hu/magyar-refomatus-egyhaz/a-magyar-reformatus-egyhaz-alkotmanya/. Available online in English here: https://reformatus.hu/english/our-church/hungarian-reformed-community/constitution-hungarian-reformed-church/.

15. The Nature and Purpose of the Church (1998), The Nature and Mission of the Church (2005) and, the latest, The Church: Towards a Common Vision (2013). See also: Participating in God’s Mission of Reconciliation – A Resource for Churches in Situations of Conflict (2005). All documents are available online here: https://www.oikoumene.org/resources/documents.

16. Compare with Viktor Orbán’s speech at the Bálványos Summer University 2022: https://miniszterelnok.hu/speech-by-prime-minister-viktor-orban-at-the-31st-balvanyos-summer-free-university-and-student-camp/. Last accessed on 3 November 2022.