History
The Reformation spread to Hungary very early on when German merchants brought over evangelical ideas from the Holy Roman Empire to the German-speaking citizens of Hungarian cities.
In the 16th century, Hungary was divided into three parts. The Northwest came under Habsburg rule, the Eastern part of the kingdom and Transylvania (vassal state) under the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Turks did not urge Muslim conversion among the conquered and Reformation thus spread through the Turkish occupied territories. Only in the Habsburg-ruled Western Hungary was this process halted by the strong counter-Reformation policy of the Empire.
A Reformed Constitutional Synod was held in 1567 in Debrecen, the main hub of Hungarian Calvinism, where the Second Helvetic Confession was adopted as the official confession of Hungarian Calvinists.
On the eve of the 18th Century, all of Hungary was gradually liberated from the Turks by a pan-European alliance led by the Habsburgs. After this, the Habsburg Emperors started to exercise their very aggressive counter-Reformation policy on the liberated territories. Consequently, in the third part of the 17th century and in most of the 18th century, Hungarian Protestants were viewed as second rank citizens in Hungary. Imperial edicts such as the Resolutio Carolina of 1731, settled the status of Protestant churches.
Only the end of the 18th century brought some relief to the Hungarian Reformed Church. Finally, the 1867 establishment of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, gave free way for the emancipation of Hungarian Protestants. In 1881, for the first time in an almost 400-year-long history, the four Hungarian Reformed Church Districts together with the Transylvanian Reformed Church held a united Synod meeting in the city of Debrecen. The modern Hungarian Reformed Church was born there at the Debrecen Synod of 1881. The inner hierarchy and the synodal-presbyterian system of the Reformed Church remains nearly unchanged from that time.
After World War I, the Peace Treaty of Trianon in 1920 greatly altered the shape of the Hungarian Reformed Church. It cut off two-thirds of Hungary's territories, and consequently a large number of Hungarian Reformed people now live in the surrounding countries.
Another trial came to the Church with the Communist Dictatorship following World War II. After the confiscation of church estates, schools and institutions, the Communist government forced the Reformed Church to sign an agreement with the state on 7 October 1948 that brought all work and personnel of the Church under the control of the state and Communist Party. The forty years of Communist rule meant a great setback for the Hungarian churches, and only the political changes of the 1990s brought about relief. Thereafter, a "free church in free state" model was adopted.
Read more about this topic: Reformed Church In Hungary
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