Church and Society in Hungary and in the Hungarian Diaspora by Nándor Dreisziger (review)

Historians are often challenged by the competing expectations of detailed storytelling and generalizable conclusions. Nandor Dreisziger has clearly found the right balance. Church and Society in Hungary and in the Hungarian Diaspora offers extraordinary breadth in discussing Hungarian churches, taking the long view on history, while, at the same time, weaving this narrative around the key themes of power and identity.

This is one of the books in which just the right amount of history of the country is presented to give a proper context, while those already familiar with Hungary can dive into the grand overview of church history. Dreisziger's central question is whether Hungarian churches would survive twenty-first-century challenges. To answer this question, he takes the reader through topics ranging from the role of the church in establishing a Christian kingdom and the dynamics of Habsburg counter-reformation to the story of the lesser known diaspora in Latin America and the impact of 1956 on Western European church communities. The structure of the book is well designed to mark historical periods with very different dynamics, and it discusses the minority and diaspora churches in separate chapters.

Church–state relations have seen the roller coaster of contested and shared power throughout Hungarian history. After the Reformation, this occurred with the added complexity of defining cultural identity through religion, for which the rising and lasting historical significance of Transylvania is a great example. Dreisziger skilfully navigates through hundreds of years of history while maintaining a clear focus on the societal impact of religion and church organization. The chapters on twentieth-century history offer an equally complex and insightful narrative on the church being caught between a rapidly secularizing population and predatory political elites, desperately trying to leverage moral authority, which was its fundamental tool. This was a particular challenge for the Roman Catholic Church, which historically not only had the most to lose but also deployed the most formidable organization with which to contend.

The story of Hungarian churches near abroad and in the Western diaspora is different because the core of their mission was not power but, rather, identity. Dreisziger provides a rich account of these churches, which is well embedded in their own cultural and historical contexts. The picture is remarkably objective for Hungarians near abroad, which is not a small feat to accomplish, as any historians of Eastern Europe can attest. The more interesting story, however, is that of the diaspora churches. For them, the challenge is maintaining the Hungarian cultural identity of their communities with a religious toolkit, even in North America where the role of churches in private life is more comprehensive than anywhere else. The question we are left with is whether diaspora churches can offer the type of community experience emigrants need at the same time that the supply of church members is running low.

The book points out the lack of religious awakening in the postcommunist period, and Dreisziger accurately lists the controversies and challenges that the churches have been facing (more discussion on small denominations would have been interesting though). One can conclude that the church cannot wield both state-induced secular power and apolitical moral authority anymore. History, however, repeats itself with churches again being tempted to legitimize a political regime in exchange for (largely, the mirage of) power and influence. If anything, the sinking of the Hungarian Christian Democratic party into complete irrelevance after 1990 should be a signal for how that would end.

Five hundred years ago, a German monk protested when the church held too much secular power, unleashing unprecedented changes. Today, a secular society may just shrug at the same interplay, undermining the very institutions that have helped maintain Hungarian identity for centuries of challenges. Church and Society in Hungary and in the Hungarian Diaspora offers an exceptional historical narrative to understand the grand transformation of churches, and it challenges the reader to consider the...