On Sundays around the world, Catholic and Protestant churches hold services in the Hungarian language. This occurs not just in Hungary, but in its neighboring states (Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and so on), as well as in far-flung places like Cleveland, Melbourne, and Montreal. Even Las Vegas has a Reformed Church with monthly services in Hungarian. How this came to be, how these churches have endured, and what their future prospects might be are thoughtfully explored in Nándor Dreisziger's global history of the Hungarian Christian churches. Dreisziger, who is Professor Emeritus of the Royal Military College of Canada, has published widely in Hungarian history, exploring the ethnogenesis of the early Hungarians, interwar diplomacy, and the 1956 Revolution. In this book, he stretches himself further and covers more than a thousand years of history, the major Christian faiths (primarily the Roman Catholic, Reformed, and Lutheran churches), and all corners of the globe. It is a remarkable achievement.
The book's opening chapters offer a lucid overview of Hungarian history, followed by an analysis of the churches in Hungary through the end of the twentieth century. These parallel narratives allow Dreisziger to develop a recurring theme: the intertwined relationship between the Christian churches and the Hungarian state. This connection grew organically in the Middle Ages, when Hungary's kings were active patrons and sometimes saints of the Church, and continued across the centuries, down to the present. Dreisziger shows how the churches benefitted from the support of the state, which patronized religious orders, defended the churches’ privileges, and relied on them to educate the mass of the population. Yet this lack of independence often came at a cost. Too cozy with kings, medieval prelates lost touch with the lower clergy and commoners; in the twentieth century, the churches struggled to find their way as Hungary oscillated between political extremes. According to Dreisziger, the nadir came under communism, which brought relentless persecution from leaders who were hostile to religion, bent on breaking all forms of resistance (real or imagined), and paranoid that Hungary might follow the lead of Poland, where Catholicism formed a bulwark against the state.
Hungarian churches in the surrounding countries fared no better. With the defeat and collapse of Austria-Hungary during World War I, Hungary had lost two-thirds of its territory, leaving millions of ethnic Hungarians beyond its much-reduced borders. Dreisziger catalogues the woes of their churches, including ruinous land reforms, restrictions on secondary schools and seminaries, arrests of priests and ministers, and crackdowns on religious publications and societies. The fate of the Hungarian churches mattered, Dreisziger stresses, because of their crucial role in providing Hungarian-language education, another major theme of the book. Outside of Hungary, only the churches could sustain a network of Hungarian-language schools, which Dreisziger sees as the key to “the survival of Hungarian culture” in the diaspora (352).
The bonds between the Christian churches, the Hungarian language, and cultural life also hold together the five chapters—nearly half the book—on the wider diaspora. Examining in turn western Europe, the United States, Canada, Latin America, and Australia and South Africa, Dreisziger documents the first Hungarians migrants, their halting attempts to form churches, challenges faced by early churchmen, fleeting “golden ages” of immigrant communities, and increasing integration into the wider society. These studies reveal Dreisziger's wide reading of the secondary literature and his deep expertise in the history of North American Hungarian communities. His account underscores how much clergymen had to adapt in moving from Hungary to Canada and the United States. At home, priests and minsters enjoyed relatively secure social status, incomes, and congregations; in the New World, they struggled to fill their pews, raise money, acquire buildings, found schools, and communicate in English with superiors who often looked with suspicion upon “ethnic” congregations. Their success in overcoming these obstacles could be seen in the dozens of Hungarian churches built around the world. Yet Dreisziger ends his book on an elegiac note, predicting that the growing pressures of assimilation and secularization will lead to the gradual disappearance of Hungarian-language churches in much of the diaspora.
Dreisziger's writing is clear and his judgments sound; he generously cites the work of other scholars, including a younger generation of church historians. He treats controversial topics (mass emigration, the Holocaust, and communist secret police) in an even-handed manner. This is above all a political and institutional history, and at times one wishes that he had situated this nuanced reading of Hungarian history into a wider context. Comparisons between the Hungarian churches and those of other states and ethnic groups would help readers better understand what is and is not distinctive about this case study. Greater depth would also be useful in places. Dreisziger mentions a host of fascinating individuals, from early Jesuit missionaries in Latin America to Bishop László Tökés, whose arrest in 1989 helped set in motion events leading to the downfall of Nicolae Ceaușescu in Romania. Yet the book rarely asks what meanings ordinary Hungarians, both lay and clergy, attached to their church and homeland across the centuries and around the globe. For example, what did it mean to be Christian and Hungarian to Protestant converts in seventeenth-century Hungary, to immigrant steelworkers in early twentieth-century Indiana, or to Catholic priests in communist Czechoslovakia?
Instructive in this regard is the life of Tibor Horváth, SJ, a longtime Professor of Theology at Regis College in Toronto, to whom this book is dedicated. Father Horváth was born in Hungary in 1927, entered the Jesuit order after World War II, fled soon after communism took hold, was ordained in Spain, finished his doctorate in Rome, and in the early 1960s came to Canada, where he remained until his death in 2008. What did Father Horváth carry with him when he crossed so many borders, and what did he leave behind? Dreisziger's book does not address questions like this. But with its global reach and wide sweep of history, it offers a rich resource and intelligent meditation on the Hungarians and their churches.
