Remarks on the Margin of Researching Transsylvanian Free Churches, New Religious Movements. The Issue of Forming Sects in the Practice of Anthropological Research

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Remarks on the Margin of Researching

Transsylvanian Free Churches, New Religious Movements. The Issue of Forming Sects in the Practice of Anthropological Research

Zoltán Simon

Institute of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies nyarad@gmail.com

Keywords: free churches, small churches, new religious movements, the formation of sects, neo-Protestant, historical churches

Preface

In the reference to the writing titled „Szabadegyházak története Magyaror- szágon 1989-ig” by Kamarás István, Rajki Zoltán,¹ Szigeti Jenő it is claimed that average men, average believers, either graduates or most of the theologists and ministers consider not only Jehovah’s Witnesses, but also Nazarenes, Advent- ists, ancient Christians, free Christians as sects, believers in false doctrines. The latest scientific research also takes prejudice into consideration avoiding the

„sect” expression or determining it as a neutral concept. In this essay I am going to reflect on one of the main questions of my doctoral thesis completed in 2012, focusing on small churches and new religious movements implicating the religious-cultural patterns of the sect formation of Trassylvanian free churches. I started my relevant research two decades ago in a small Transsylvanian region.

As an anthropologist I distance myself from the negative „sect” expression.

During separating the small churches, the free churches and the new religious movements my interpretation is not theological and certain terms from the local public discourse like „more sectarian”, „more accepted” and „more zealous”

are used in quotation marks avoiding the classification of the religious behav- iour of the congregations and the believers.

Historical and conceptional frames

According to Csaba Fazekas it was about the time of the Enlightenment when in the most European and Northern American countries the process of the modi- fication of the public perception in connection with the religious minorities

1 RAJKI Zoltán és SZIGETI Jenő, Szabadegyházak története Magyarországon 1989-ig, (Budapest: Gon- dolat Kiadó, 2012) 9.

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started even at the level of the political power and from the point of view of historic Christian churches. In other words, the transformation of the social structure and the state control resulted in the medieval treatment of the non- official religious life that is the heretic movements. The consequence of this very slow process was that in modern countries by the second half of the XIX. century instead of heretic movements we talk about sects or small churches.²

Sándor Makkai distinguishes five categories among the reasons of sect forming which are theological, congregational, social, psychological and other factors.³ In this essay I do not intend to deal with each factor separately and I do not necessarily determine the congregational criteria of the sect phenomenon. I am analysing combination effects and trying to introduce new conceptional categories into the description of the mechanism of sect formation.

In the local communities researched by me there is a sharp confrontation between the believers of the Reformed church which is the majority and the sect members. Religious communities have always had their own organization which is the church. Religion conveys culture, worldview, moral and behavioural patterns together with the institutional background of the church. As for the anthropological research the examination of the religious-church (inner) circle of phenomena does not only mean the discussion of the methodological questions, you should also take the historic-social context into consideration.

In this case I only mention the political-cultural criteria of the regime change in Romania. In the small region examined by me the church-social frames of the sect formation developed only after the regime change.

In the examined twelve Transsylvanian settlements with Reformed believers’ majority and Hungarian ethnicity the Reformed church preserved its eth- nical characteristics during the Ceauşescu era. The minority ethnic identity and culture propagated by the church was able to fix the identity patterns of the locals. At that time there were no other identity and religious-political alterna- tives. In the former socialist countries after the 1990s the social-economic change also resulted in religious change. The new religious movements decen- tralized the situation of the historic churches in Romania, especially in some particular Transsylvanian regions. In the examined small region during the regime change the signs of the crisis in religious life could already be found. Re- formed congregations could hardly adapt the traditional models of religiousness to the suddenly appearing religious ‘market’. The powerlessness of the

2 FAZEKAS Csaba, Kisegyházak és szektakérdés a Horthy-korszakban, (Budapest: TEDISZ és Szent Pál Akadémia, 1996) 11.

3 FEKETE Péter, Az egyház és a szekta, (Budapest: Magyarországi Református Egyház Kálvin János Kiadója, 1993) 87.

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congregations towards the new spiritual needs did not originate from the rigid- ity of traditionalism or dogmatic isolation. They experienced a certain religious- social phenomenon which was a burden for the critical social factors so the signs of crisis in the spiritual and religious life came out of the sphere of interest of the church and the congregation.⁴

The dissolution of the inner order of the examined Reformed congregations after the regime change was in connection with a phenomenon which is called concentration of capital in the Protestant ethics by István Kinda who researched it in other Transsylvanian Protestant communities. He says that some Hungarian congregations which successfully cooperated with western or over- seas religious foundations received financial support for caritative investments (e.g. nursing homes) and were able to give financial, moral and social help to the members of the congregation and to families who needed it. Experience shows that in these congregations with successful twinning partners the conflicts are more hidden and the social tensions appear in the form of gossip which focus on the public goods stolen by the minister or the suspiciously big fortune of the reverend.⁵ In the early 1990s the unequal distribution of the for- eign support had a negative effect on the traditional order of the Reformed congregations examined by me. As a consenquence certain groups were left out of the support by the church administrative elite. The goods distributed in carton boxes were meant as living conditions by the locals. These goods from the West which they had never seen before generated economy-centered intentions and the content of these boxes effected long fights. In many places there were open debates accusing the ministers and the unequal distribution resulted in forming

‘parties’ within the local communities. One party was loyal to the church and the opposing party was against it. The distribution soon influenced the attend- ance at churches and the church-social cooperation was continuously narrow- ing. The support from the West (mainly from the Netherlands) caused conflicts and overshadowed the church-religious role of the minister. A typical Reformed minister who was the necessary figure fot the religious-social rituals in the traditional Transsylvanian communities and who was placed above average people because of his purity and his service became a secular person due to his capital-centered intentions. In this way his former sacral status was lost.

The widespread secularization resulted in changing the image of an ideal minister. In some communities (mainly where the rate of education is higher)

4 Vö. BÍRÓ A. Zoltán – TÚROS Endre, „Egyház – a társadalom szemszögéből”, in Változásban? Ele- mzések a romániai magyar társadalomról, szerk. TÚROS Endre, Helyzet könyvek, (Csíkszereda: KAM – Regionális és Antropológiai Kutatások Központja és Pro-Print Könyvkiadó, 1995) 105–133.

5 KINDA István, „A protestáns pap és közösség konfliktusa”, Korunk, 15(2004) 12. sz. Online: El- ektronikus Periodika Archívum, epa.oszk.hu – November 2019.

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the minister can/could lose his monopolized intellectual position and the local community becomes less religious. Nowadays more and more requirements are attached to the status of ministers of historical churches which are aimed to maintain the public interests. In addition, a good minister should be influen- tial, an excellent speaker, an outstanding economist and organizer.⁶

The free churches and the new religious movements reacted on the social- cultural signs of crisis after the regime change more sensitively, so they were able to solve the problems more effectively. This kind of sensitivity, the ideological skills to solve the problems soon created an ideological market at the level of the individuals. During the process of sect formation certain academic writers blame the church for not supporting its believers.⁷ According to most writers dealing with Hungarian and Transsylvanian sects this kind of distance between the church and the believers stimulated the sects to be formed.⁸

The people asked during the research think that the free churches and the new religious movements check and support their believers’ social factors more effectively. Hard work connected with the change of the lifestyle, frugality and the life strategies was offered by the free churches and the new religious movements offered the believers the possibility of rising their social status.

They showed the way not only to salvation but also the solution of the problems of secular life.⁹ The social factors themselves did not start the process of the distribution of historic churches and the process of sect formation. One of the reasons of sect formation is the protest of the poor congregation members against the rich and secularized church.¹⁰

The protestant theological approach about sects emphasizes that sect formation originates from the personal power of Satan.¹¹ During my field research I also found that most of the Reformed believers called sect members’ people obsessed with Satan’. In the missionary practice of the free churches and the new religious movements polemics are unavoidable generating the dissymet- rical connections among congregations. The local people especially stigmatize Jehovah’s Witnesses using the ‘sect’ expression. Examining the scripture reading among Jehovah’s Witnesses Tünde Lőrinczi says the community does not

6 Ld. bővebben: KINDA, A protestáns pap, op.cit.

7 FEKETE, Az egyház és a szekta, op.cit. 22.

9 MÁTÉ-Tóth András és TÖRÖK Péter és NAGY Gábor Dániel, „Az új vallási közösségek viszonya a tár- sadalomhoz. Nyitottság, zártság, vonzerő néhány új vallási közösség tagjainál”, in Vallásosság/vál- tozatok. Vallási sokféleség Magyarországon, szerk. MÁTÉ-Tóth András és TÓTH András és NAGY Gábor Dániel, Vallás a társadalomban – Religion in Society 3, (Szeged: JATEPress, 2008) 29–47., 44.

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have set prayers. As an unwritten rule every member knows that the goal of their gatherings is to accept the sacred messages and they ask Jehovah to make them understand the messages and to guard their life. The longest part of their congregational lesson is learning. During these lessons everything (the’what’

and ‘how’) is organized. The members should prepare for these lessons at home by solving the tasks appointed by the Barbican each month. The Barbican serves as a code text offering elaborated scripture reading possibilities to eve- ryone. Jehovah’s witnesses as a community is regulated by institutional frames.

Their basic dogmas are well elaborated and the community operates according to a system of rules. The community has a common knowledge, because the rules related to the readings are known by each member.¹²

In Transsylvania the public discourse judges rashly when the free churches and the new religious movements are said to be the enemies of the state and the church. The Baptist and Adventist congregations examined by us operate in agreement with the Reformed church in everyday life. They intend to keep their own religious identity rather than to practice their religion in an extensive way. in the self-statement of the Baptist believers there is a certain critical attitude towards the Reformed church, but it is not against the local historic primary situation of the church. The community of all the free churches is not organized from above by the society. The believer decides independently whether he/she wants to belong to a certain church or not. In contract with the hierarchy of the historic churches the free churches operate in a democratic way. They accept ecumenical clergy and do not use liturgical clothing. Some of their spiritual leaders have studied theology, and others have civil professions.

The community itself decides who will be accepted as a leader.¹³

In the examined small region the free church communities are divided according to the social status, age and sex, but they have their own characteristic features. There are urban groups (which belong to the congregations in Ma- rosvásárhely), but the communities preserve their original rural base. Examin- ing the specific effects of modernization in the region, which are the possible social factors affecting the discontinuity of religious life, we have to mention the extremely strong domestic mobility towards Marosvásárhely. This kind of mobility and the broad social horizons which are linked with the new residental area and workplace are between the religious life and the urban status quo.

Changing a residental area meant not only a new milieu, but also a different

12 LŐRINCZI Tünde, „Bibliaértelmezési lehetőségek egy Jehova Tanúi közösségben”, Vallástudományi Szemle, 6(2010) 3. sz. 63–70., 66–67.

13 FEHÉR Ágnes, „A szabadegyházak”, in Egyházak és vallások a mai Magyarországon, szerk.

GESZTELYI Tamás, (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1991) 121–142., 123.

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sense of identity, which did not weaken even after the 1990s, when a lot of people moved back. Moreover, it is becoming stronger as a result of the change of the generations. As more and more young people are going to school to Ma- rosvásárhely or other Transsylvanian cities or going to work to Hungary or Western Europe, the effects of modernization and the new inventions (infocom- munications technologies) are in direct contradiction to the traditional seg- ments which regulate the society and the religious life. The primary signs of crisis related to the distribution of the traditional church are the decreasing number of the believers, the cessation of the inner unity of religiousness and in the congregations which are in crisis aimlessness and disinterest can be experienced in connection with the religious life.¹⁴ This process increases the number of disappointed people who take part only in the great religious festivals.

Most of the related literature considers secularization as a conducive factor of constructing the religious-social conditions of free church movements.

Besides secularization there are several processes which can result in the necessary changes of religious life. So secularization is not the only process which is the reason for the cessation of the religious life, it is a natural process which shows the changes in the form of religion.¹⁵ Tomka does not understand why the effects of secularization were a lasting evidence in connection with the ceas- ing public role of the church. The most problematic part of this theory is that its starting point assumes that everybody is a believer.¹⁶ Secularization is basically a social process, its theoretical frame focuses on christianity especially on the christianity in the West. it is linked with ‘secular’, it is the opposite of ‘clerical’

and its meaning is ‘collateral’. Attila Jakab historian, the specialist of the history of religion says that the second most important point of secularization is that it ends the influence of the religion on the state.¹⁷ In some cases secularization is useful for the believers because it reveals the externals in christianity. Only the convinced believers keep their faith. In this case the dogmas and the religious moral norms find each other.¹⁸

The anthropological research focusing the new Transsylvanian religious movements and free churches show that the members of the society consider the believers of the free churches fundamentalists because of their principles,

14 GEREBEN Ferenc és TOMKA Miklós, Vallásosság és nemzettudat. Vizsgálódások Erdélyben, (Buda- pest: Teleki László Alapítvány és Corvinus Kiadó, 2001) 584–585.

15 TOMKA Miklós, „A vallásszociológia új útjai”, Replika, 7(1996) 21–22. sz. 163–171. Online:

www.c3.hu/scripta – November 2019.

16 TOMKA, A vallásszociológia új útjai, op.cit.

17 JAKAB Attila, „Mi a szekularizáció?”, in Magyar Szekuláris Egyesület, 2014. április 20. Online: sze- kularis.blog.hu, 2019. november.

18 JAKAB, Mi a szekularizáció? op.cit.

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social philosophy and their behavioural patterns. According to Dóra Szilc the main feature of fundamentalism is that the members get a well-organized frame by organizing their life on the ideological base like a family. In this way the out- side rejected world is substituted by a specific worldview (Mannheim) the on- tological unity of which is created by the group building up the necessary ide- ology.¹⁹ Besides Jehovah’ Witnesses the majority, the Reformed believers re- gard the Kalapos Gábor gypsies who belong to the Hetednapi Adventist church as fundamentalists. In the religious life of Kalapos Gábor gypsies certain funda- mentalist features can be found, but fundamentalism as a basic religious rule is not characteristic for them.²⁰

Conclusion

The examined free churches and new religious movements are regarded noncomformists by the Reformed majority congregations in spite of their di- versity and they are separated and easily stigmatized. The meaning of the ‘sect’

notion changed a lot in the past one hundred years. According to a determina- tion from the early XX. century a sect is a free community of strict and self-con- scious Christians who consider themselves truly reborn, form a league, sepa- rate themselves from the real world, have a common lifestyle, emphasize the law instead of mercy and with their radicalism they try to create the Christian life of love preparing for the coming country of God.²¹ Nowadays the ‘sect’ expression is related not only to the Christian communities which left the church, but also other religious groups or even certain groups which follow their political or cultural goals fanatically. The word ‘sect’ supposedly does not originate from the verb ‘secare’ meaning ‘cut’, rather than from he verb ‘sequi’ meaning

‘follow’. The emphasis is not on separation, following a particular message is important. Christian sects used to be determined on the basis of their isolation by christianity and in many cases by the researchers.

Examining the different ethnis strategies of the historic churches and the small churches in Vojvodina and comparing the traditional religious communities and the free small churches Richárd Papp points out that in spite of the fact that the latters have less believers, but they have different answers to the

19 SZILCZ Dóra, „Új vallási fundamentalizmus”, in Szekták – új vallási jelenségek, szerk. LUGOSI Ágnes és LUGOSI Győző, (Budapest: Pannonica, 1998) 29–48., 43.

20 About the adventism of Kalapos Gábor gypsies I have already published several essays. In the centre of my research there was the analysis of the effects of the gypsy Adventist congregation on the local society. I have examined the gypsy-Hungarian, the Hungarian-gypsy and the gypsy-gypsy relationships and cohabitation in different timelines.

21 NÉMETH Dávid, Pasztorálantropológia I, (Budapest: KGRE és L’Harmattan Kiadó, 2012) 240.

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questions of the relations of culture, national identity and religion.²² The historic churches and the free churches had common theological denominaters for a long time. Fragments are constructed along the social-cultural interpretations of the religious contents. According to Papp the particular differences between the historic and free churches need examining and revealing by researchers.

In the examined local communities the members of the local society give the ‘sect’ name to the believers of the free churches during the everyday inter- actions. In the public intercourse of the locals the sects are small religious communities the aim of which is finding the ‘true way’, the ‘truth’. Their life is separated, isolated.

Because the intense religious pluralism each congregation and church in the examined region has a specific competitive connection and they rationalize their institutions in order to fight effectively in the religious ‘market’.²³ The religiousness of the locals stays in the private sphere or appears in the religious communities formed by the religious elite or the religious involvement ends together with the forms of private religious commitment.²⁴

In my essay I tried to avoid ranking the congregations in spite of the fact that these religious groups are highly standardized and hierarchical. As János Szántó says there are more and more potential ‘consumer’ in the ‘religious market’ where depression can be dissolved by the allotment of the alternative values. In the value integration process of a society it is important what kind of positive values can be chosen by the next generation because religious activities –beyond the individual level- are group activities. The specific religious interest can serve as the collection of the local social interests.²⁵

Translated by Zsuzsanna Békésiné Bodnár

22 PAPP Richárd, „Történelmi egyházak és kisegyházak a vajdaságban: eltérő etnikus stratégiák?”, in Kisebbség és kultúra. Antropológiai tanulmányok I, (Budapest: MTA Etnikai-nemzeti Kisebbségku- tató Intézet és MTA Politikai Tudományok Intézete és ELTE Kulturális Antropológiai Szakcsoport, 2004) 212–249., 230.

23 SZÁNTÓ János, Vallásosság egy szekularizált társadalomban, szerk. NAGY Péter Tibor és RÁCZ

György és LENGYEL Zsuzsanna, (Budapest: Új Mandátum Könyvkiadó, 1997) 35.

24 Ibid. 35.

25 Ibid. 35–36.

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My major publications on the topic:

SIMON Zoltán, „Identitás-vizsgálat Nyárádkarácson község egykori görög katolikus közösségében”, Egyháztörténeti Szemle, 4(2003) 2. sz. 100–131.

SIMON Zoltán, „»Szappan és víz«. A karácsonfalvi cigányság vallásos életének vizsgálata a Hetedik Napot Ünneplő Adventista Egyház térnyerésének vonzatában”, in Ünnepi tanulmányok Szigeti Jenő 70. születésnapjára, szerk. Daniel HEINZ és FAZEKAS Csaba és RAJKI Zoltán, (Miskolc, Bíbor Kiadó, 2006) 278–299.

SIMON Zoltán, „Etnikai, vallási identitás-konstrukciók egy középső-nyárádmenti görög katolikus kis közösség példáján keresztül”, Néprajzi Látóhatár, 19(2010) 4. sz. 4–44.

SIMON Zoltán, „Alsó- és Középső-Nyárádmente (egykori) görögkatolikus közösségeinek vallási-etnikai jegyei”, in Keleti keresztény kultúra határainkon innen és túl, szerk. BOJTOS Anita, (Piliscsaba és Budapest: PPKE Ifjúsági Koordinációs Egyesület, 2015) 152–166.

SIMON Zoltán, „»Műk régen nem jártunk templomba, sehova (…) most mind megtértünk«. Nyárádka- rácsonfalvi gábor cigányok vallási életének múltja és jelene”, Néprajzi Látóhatár, 27(2018) 1–2. sz.

125–152.