Hungary

Known as “the final fortress of Western Christianity” by its citizens, the central European country of Hungary has understood itself as a Christian country since 997 CE. Today, many Hungarians have left off direct involvement in religious institutions but remain informally bound to their local churches through life cycle rituals. Though large portions of the population claim no religion (and approximately half of the Hungarians surveyed in 2005 claimed to not believe in God), nearly 85% of the populace assert allegiance to a religion. Fifty-two percent of Hungarians identified as Roman Catholics, 16% as Hungarian Reform (a Calvinist denomination), 3% as Lutheran, 3% as Greek Orthodox, and less than 1% as Jewish, a significant change from the historic number of Jews in Hungary. There are also small Buddhist and Islamic communities, and Hungarians are thought in general to be less devout than other European adherents. Roman Catholicism, the Reform Hungarian Church, Lutheranism, and Judaism constitute what are known as the “historic” Hungarian religions and garner between them 93% of the total state financial support to religious groups. Considering the small proportion of the population that Judaism now claims, surprisingly Hungary for many years housed the largest Jewish population in the world next to Russia, and many Jews persecuted in the 19th century found refuge in the country. Budapest has the largest synagogue in Europe, and the special place of the Jewish people in Hungary is still evidenced in its laws, even though the Jewish community was decimated by genocidal Nazi policies during World War II.

The kingdom founded in 997 CE by King István, who would later be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church as Saint Stephen, persevered over 900 years. Predominantly Catholic until the 16th century, Hungary was affected by the Protestant Reformation as well as the Counter-Reformation. During the 16th century, nearly all the populace of Hungary converted first to Lutheranism and then to Calvinism, but by the 17th century, the country predominantly returned to Catholicism. Hungarians were never unified under a religious banner again, however, and especially in Debrecen, known as the Calvinist Rome, significant Protestant communities still endure. One of the great cultural centers of the world, the Kingdom of Hungary ceased to exist in 1918 under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. After World War II, Hungary was occupied by the Soviet Union and witnessed the communist rule of János Kádár, under whom traditional national consciousness weakened, as well as religious worldviews and values. In 1989, Hungary became the first country to lift the Iron Curtain, and in 1999, it joined NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), later becoming part of the European Union in 2004.

Though Hungary has a long history of Christianity, it is the short period of socialism that has shaped the state's position on religion in the 21st century. Hungary financially supports churches and parochial schools in recompense for their dissolution during the campaign against religion in the socialist regime. Support fluctuates with the [Page 538]current economic status of the country, and the difficult financial straits Hungary found itself in the first decade of the 2000s resulted in the constriction of that aid, amid outcries from religious communities. The country is also engaged in an ongoing process of litigation seeking to return property that was seized from churches in the middle of the 20th century.

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