Abstract
Much has been written on the collapse of communism and on the rapid reconstruction of society in Eastern European countries that followed. This article points out how the church promoted reform and how crucial the religious communities were for social revival in the period following 1989. The Eastern European experience is a powerful argument for why the church and religious communities should regain a strong voice at the political level.
Introduction
At the beginning of the 1950s, when the ideological retraining of staff was on the agenda in state institutions, the following joke made the rounds: members of the new “socialist” police were examined to check if they had been under excessive clerical influence. For this purpose three pictures were posted on the wall: Lenin, Marx and between them Christ on the cross. The policemen were asked to identify the three pictures. The first examinee hemmed and hawed and finally blurted out: “I do not know the two chaps on the sides, but the one in the middle is Jesus Christ, blessed be His name.” He was told right away that he was dismissed. His colleague waiting outside asked for his help, so he told him: “You will have to identify three pictures. The one in the middle is Christ on the cross, but do not admit that you recognise him, or you will be fired.” Obeying the instructions, the second policeman answered: “Unfortunately, I do not know the chap in the middle, but the other two are certainly the two robbers who were crucified with him.”
The suppression of religion under Marxism-Leninism
If one tries to determine the function of religion after the financial, political and moral collapse of communist ideology, one needs first to understand how scientific socialism or Marxism-Leninism attempted to replace religion and take its place in every area of life, including the public and private spheres, as a kind of quasi-religion.
The structure of ideas in communist ideology, forced on Eastern and Central European countries during the Soviet occupation and meant to organise the world, is merely a deconsecrated, secular paraphrase of Christian morals. The chosen people, that is, the proletariat and the socialist man, lead the masses to the Promised Land (communism). In the meantime they have to do battle with the idolaters (especially imperialists and the petty bourgeoisie) and the cult of the golden calf (capitalism and the imperialists), whereas public interest–-which is given absolute precedence over anything else–-is interpreted solely by God's messengers (the wise leaders and their best disciples), who own the tablets of the law. The attempt to replace Christianity also included secular analogues of Christian martyrs, replacing them with the “heroes”–-the otherwise ordinary criminals of the communist movement who fought against the rule of law and democracy–-of the great October Socialist Revolution, and cheap imitations of Christian festive days. For example, the day of the new constitution replaced the day commemorating King Saint Stephen, founder of Hungary, a “pine festival” replaced Christmas, and a “name-giving ceremony” replaced baptism and so on.
Communist ideology replaced faith with “scientific” materialism raised to the rank of a discipline, and considered religion and the churches as powers of reaction and fascism, which, they accused, tied society down. However, the new faith, exercised in a rite with the dictator dressed as high priest, found followers in ever-decreasing numbers in Eastern and Central Europe, especially after the disillusionment of the 1950s. Beginning in the 1960s, communism was gradually replaced by the concept of “existing socialism”, and the communists by uninhibited, cynical socialists with no principles whatsoever.
The secretary general of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, jános Kádár, probably the most prominent figurehead of existing socialism, a leader who was also widely acknowledged in the West, summarised the policy of the party regarding church and religion as follows:
A distinction must be made between the political fight against clerical reaction and the theoretical struggle against religious ideology …It must clearly be seen that we fought against clericalism tooth and nail, with machine guns and prison, for our country is not ruled by clerics, that is, by priests, but rather power is in the hands of workers and farmers…Perhaps we will have to fight against clericalism for another five years and against religious ideology for some two generations. Everyone knows that this is not just taking the stick and beating religious ideology down.
In the end, Kádár, his “wise disciples” and their followers managed to turn the vast majority of people against churches and religion and “liberate” them from the moral consensus mediated by Christianity for one and a half millennia, a moral consensus that embraced the entire society, including those who violated its laws since they were aware that they had transgressed the rules and felt guilty. However, as the socialists were unable to provide new foundations and standards, by the time of the regime change the moral consciousness and strength of character of a considerable number of people were at their lowest: morals had weakened and guilt vanished as a consequence.
All these factors might suggest that communism and “existing” socialism had actually achieved their goal: the complete destruction of church and religion. However, it was precisely the fall of its system that best proved how inadequate socialism was for this battle.
Religion as a promoter of regime change
In the 1980s, when we were newlyweds, my wife and I took our rucksacks, joined a couple of friends and left for Poland. We wanted to see the Polish pope, a source of hope during perhaps the most hopeless years of communism. There we stood, just a couple of Hungarians among hundreds of thousands of believers, and we knew for sure that so much pure will and prayer could not fail; it must have consequences. The great miracle had started a few years before that in Poland, when that friendly looking man, dressed in white, returned home from Rome for the first time in 1979 and told the millions who gathered to meet him: “Do not be afraid!” This is what triggered the change; the global collapse of communism, which set the Hungarians and other Eastern and Central Europeans free, restored their independence and ultimately led to the reunification of Europe.
Obviously, this miracle also had its antecedents. The driving forces behind the miracle were, and still are, the hundreds and thousands of anonymous people who served their nations by keeping their faith and principles to the very end. They suffered their trials because they were convinced that their personal lives and destinies were ultimately in the hands of a higher Power. We had kings, politicians, priests and teachers serving in the spirit this belief, and most of all mothers who brought up their children in this faith generation after generation.
“A nation's wealth lies first and foremost with the people who make it,” John Paul II said. “With individual persons; with the youth; every single person who observes in the name of truth, inasmuch as it is truth that appears in love.” In the teaching of John Paul II, to watch means to make a clear distinction between good and evil, while never confusing them. It means the effort to become people who live with a clear conscience. We should not separate ourselves and act only in our own interests and considerations, rather we should be able to see other people too. Watching also means love of neighbour and fundamental human solidarity, and assumes responsibility for our common heritage, our homeland.
Let us agree to clarify a historical misconception. Many people think that the favourable circumstances of global politics, namely resolute political opposition, the weakening of the Soviet empire and Gorbachev's perestroika were sufficient in themselves to ensure that independent states would emerge in Eastern and Central Europe.
However, this is not the case. If this were true, the regimes would have survived in these countries, at most without Soviet influence. Democracy would not have evolved in its current form, for example. Perhaps the communist armed forces might even have remained in place, only with large ribbons on their gun barrels in the spirit of reform.
Thanks to those who watched, however, history took a different course. It is not very difficult to redraft the political map of Europe; even a schoolboy can erase the line of the Iron Curtain. However, to accomplish the required changes and do everything needed for a genuine democratic transition takes more. It demands imagination, personal courage and, first and foremost, faith.
Forty years of socialist deadlock caused enormous damage to the organic progress of the eastern part of Europe. For the ability to maintain our ideals during those 40 years, with one eye always fixed on the happier part of Europe, we recognised the path we had to take. The extraordinary role of movements based on faith and civil courage has to be recognised once and for all. These movements and their actions served as beacons during the cold dark night of dictatorship.
Among these movements were the 1953 uprising in Eastern Germany, the 1956 revolution and war of independence in Hungary, the Prague Spring in 1968 and the Polish Solidarity movement that spread in the 1980s. The help we Hungarians received from the other side of the Iron Curtain, not only for the 1956 refugees, but also for several decades to follow, also belongs here.
In a spiritual and moral sense, the regime change started in Hungary on 16 june 1989 when the last honours were given to the former communist, Imre Nagy, the Prime Minister in 1956, at his reburial more than 30 years after he was executed in 1958. Hundreds of thousands of people were standing in Heroes’ Square and the entire country was watching the ceremony on television, some full of hope, others with fear. Citizens, who might not have been fully aware back then, somehow felt that no new beginning was possible before the dead had been given final honours. As during a flash of lightning, for a brief moment past and future, death, birth and rebirth were clearly seen. A nation can be born and can be reborn in such moments. On that day those who had faith were purified and experienced the miracle.
When after more than 50 years the question of religious affiliation was asked during the 2001 census in Hungary, well-known pollsters refused to believe the outcome. Some 75% of the country's population, 7.5 million people, stated that they belonged to one or another Christian denomination. Previously, pollsters had estimated the number of genuinely religious or “pious” people to be between 10 and 15%. Most likely, both figures are statistically true. The fact that 7.5 million people–-of whom 7.3 million specified one of the three historic churches, Roman Catholic, Reformed and Lutheran, as their affiliation–- had registered themselves as religious indicates that the overwhelming majority of the population connect their religious identities to the Christian tradition of this country.
Many did not have a solid faith and even more had been made to falter by the ardent anti-church and anti-religious rhetoric expressed in language that was hardly modern. Although no longer using fire and sword, or machine guns and prison as during the era of dictatorship, the struggle against religion and the churches, which had maintained their cohesion at the community level, continued and is still going on, albeit with more refined techniques: it reappears in the form of debates, disguised as scientific discussions on the separation of state and church, that repeatedly flare up.
The church and public debate
After the collapse of Communism, one of the main ideological issues was this: who should we be afraid of in the new situation? Should we fear the surviving and already reactivated remnants of the communist secret police and the political influence of the former party elite who made their fortune on semi-legal privatisation deals? Or, rather, did the primary threat come from the resurfacing of that nationalism that stemmed from before World War II, with its heritage of anti-Semitism and racist inclinations? Europe, partly because of the wars that broke out in the Balkans, decided that the latter was the most dangerous threat. Not recognising the real nature and dangers of post-communist networks and the political influence of their system of interest, it has become widely accepted that the clear and present danger to the new Europe came from nationalism, and all political and ideological efforts must be directed to address the phenomenon of nationalism. Churches, religion and ultimately Christianity itself was the loser in this decision without the public ever paying attention or recognising the potential of faith to contribute to the moral foundations of this new European order, and how it could support this newly acquired freedom with values. Instead, churches, especially the historic churches, were forced by those who raise the monster of old-new nationalism, to have to prove repeatedly that they have nothing to do either with the extreme right, or with the nationalism and xenophobia that characterise the extreme right.
This has become the “club” always at hand whenever church leaders encourage their followers to behave or act in a certain manner that is in conflict with extreme liberal values. For the forces advocating ultraliberal politics, defenceless people with an eroded internal order but fuelled by enormous desire for freedom are the most ideal targets in the endeavour to expand liberal influence. The ultraliberal proposition that “you can do everything as long as you do not limit the freedom of someone else” actually means that failing an internal standard, the dividing line between the two parties is drawn by the one that is stronger at the given moment. In this context hardly anything can be said of a common consensus and the common good, as society is conceived merely as a series of economic exchanges and the legal rules created by those in power.
This is how we arrived at the point where churches and religion once again got in the way of “progressive ideas” and, let me add, in the way of the business interests that wish to do away with any opposition to their values. Christianity has not been subject to political attacks and heavy pressure by mere happenstance in Western Europe, either. So too in the homeland of democracy, the USA, where bishops speaking out against abortion were silenced with reasons all too familiar to the rest of us: they should not intervene, for by doing so they violate the principle of the separation of church and state. If religion and the churches can be portrayed as political and cultural dangers overseas, we should not be astonished at the conditions in former communist countries, where politicians compete to attack the historic churches.
While non-communist center-right political powers consciously undertake to stand up for Christian values, it does not even occur to them to represent religion and Christianity in public life, as they consider the autonomy of the churches to be an important asset.
Thanks to the dominance of the opposing leftist-liberal part of the political spectrum over public opinion, however, priests and pastors are vilified if they dare to express their opinion on any public issue. It must be sadly admitted that the accusers do, at least in part, achieve their goals with this persistent and aggressive offensive against dissenting opinions, as there are many people, even churchgoers, who are inclined to believe and accept even the most absurd ideas of these opinion leaders. With this they contribute to the winding down of the community-forming power of religion, the sovereignty and internal autonomy of the church and, ultimately, to the creation of a privatised religion considered desirable by a secularised state.
Privatised religion is a matter of the individual and God alone: “In this world religion is only a little niche among many others, and its principles are followed only in private life.” It is a world in which everybody is an expert in theology and casually picks the theology he or she likes from among many on offer. The church is seen only as a voluntary association, and individuals remain in a church only as long as it meets their expectations. It follows that in the world of privatised religions, religion without churches becomes possible, leading to the elimination of religious communities capable of influencing politics.
As if the old communist agitation and propaganda were true, “this is not just about taking a stick and beating religious ideology down”. It must be further converted into a commercial good, which can survive only if the churches become some kind of “service providing” institutions in a welfare state. The earlier liberal thought, formulated in the nineteenth century, that every nation and idea should be represented in politics and their interaction lead to political decisions, has been twisted to exclude religion from community life even in the form of representing simple opinions. From all this it follows that the enemies of religion can now safely conclude that although a minority politician, a woman or a worker is entitled–-and we have to stress here, rightfully so–-to defend the rights of his or her own group, a religious politician or a church should be barred from doing the same.
For that very reason, we should not forget that the history of Christianity is the history of courage. First and foremost, courage is what we need to undertake the mission of the church and pursue Christian politics. We have to overthrow the power of the current monopoly on public opinion. Christians who undertake an active role in public life and in the church need to join forces in order to change the spirit of the age. We must represent religious values in public life, and restore the prestige and standing of values and morals higher than politics by giving personal examples. This is in our interest–-the interest of all believers, because for a conscientious believer no issue falls beyond the scope of religion and, simultaneously, all relevant issues have already become political issues. This is also in the public interest, as the concept of neutrality in public issues that characterises an ultraliberal state will sooner or later turn against itself and–-as seen in our days–-religion and ethics will be replaced by something else. A state that establishes its legitimacy merely on welfare and economic performance will become unstable, because it is supported by its citizens only as long as it is capable of ensuring uninterrupted welfare.
For this reason, churches and religion must return to public life. Naturally, not on the side of one or another political party, but rather as representatives of the moral values they proclaim and serve, above and beyond all political power. It is the task of the churches in the first place to convince their believers that they are able to do so. The debate is not about which political direction serves our ends. This should not be an example followed by churches; rather, they should encourage believers to contribute to the renewal of public life on the basis of firm moral foundations and to participate in political life. The process must include Christians who consider themselves politically on the left as well as those who are conservatives.
We who took an active role in the new beginning of Eastern and Central Europe are well aware of this preserving power of Christianity, and therefore feel obliged to ask: why should we deprive Europe of all these good things? The question hangs above us: will the churches of Europe remain strong enough to represent in the structures of Europe the faith that has been evident in its individual countries for centuries? If we do not tell them, if we do not bear witness to the heritage of faith they are also part of, who will do it instead of us? Although in Europe everybody lives off the fruits of Christian faith in one way or another, many people are unaware of this fact. In the more fortunate states of Europe, the continuity of the presence of the church from the cradle to the grave, from baptism to funeral, has never been interrupted. Religious education in kindergartens and schools, scouts, the university organisations of churches and the weekdays and holidays of parishes have kept religion in the ambit of most people's lives. Nevertheless, a scrutiny of Western Europe reveals that while in everyday life religious values still keep communities reliably together, the role of churches in public life seems to be declining.
The situation has been different in Hungary. Following decades of oppression and repression, perhaps it is not an overstatement to say that in Hungary many people have rediscovered the church in the recent decade. For many the church has always been part of their lives. Others, especially before the system change, were excluded from Christian life. The teachings of the church and the community life offered within the church still have the power of revelation for many people all over Central Europe. I have walked this way myself.
In contrast to Western Europe, in Central Europe and more specifically in Hungary, the role of the churches in public life has gradually increased in the past decade, and this trend is very likely to continue into the future. Nowadays when we discuss the role of Christian faith and values in public life and even in the life of the state, there are still a great many people who disparagingly smile at us. Nevertheless, we must be aware that the very issue at stake here is whether it is possible to build political action on Christian belief.
Let us start from the requirement that Christians must follow Truth, in capital letters. Christians are also aware of the fact that they do not embody truth. Only the communists and the Bolsheviks told us the lie that there is an earthly incarnation of truth and that this was none other than they themselves. Furthermore, Christians also know that there is only one exclusive truth. The existence of several truths is a serious mistake, a deception of relativism. Christians also know that Truth exists; what is more, only one Truth exists, and this Truth will sooner or later become the standard in our life. Truth is unquestionable, irrespective of the actual support or refusal of the majority.
Christian people must approach public issues and any other issue, including that of the majority, from the perspective of that Truth.
By now, Europe has become a world governed by democracy. Democratic politics is a collective system based on the will of the majority. In other words, democratic politics are about creating a majority to support the efforts we represent. That is, if we take it seriously that our mission is to improve people's lives and if we mean not to abandon that mission. In public life, especially in the world of politics, without majority support a person's efforts are respectable at best but, it must be admitted, have little effect. Achieving a majority can be considered–-erroneously–-as the ultimate goal of politics. We see a majority as the necessary and unavoidable means of action. No matter how firm and stable a basis the concept of majority is for democracy, in itself it is insufficient.
Conclusion
We must rediscover the nineteenth-century ideology that, beyond the separation of church and state, did not pursue a separation of religion and politics. Communities, states and unions of the twenty-first century, including the European Union, cannot do without the notions of responsibility and morality that complement the notion of freedom. The State can neither create nor maintain these values; it is dependent on those communities that serve as measures and standards for citizens, and on politics that help to decide what is just, what is good, what is solidarity and what is in accordance with human dignity.
A religious community is only capable of meeting this challenge if the same standard is applied to its own internal structures–-that is, if the criteria of fairness, solidarity and human dignity are applied. Credibility is an important prerequisite to presenting values and to conveying messages. It is for this reason that the principle and practice of ecclesia semper conservanda et reformanda is the common theological treasure of Christian churches, Catholics and Protestants alike.
Footnotes