Civil Society and Religion in Post-Communist Hungary

Abstract

How can the churches in Hungary today help in building civil society without becoming politicised or submerged in a secular world? This essay focuses on the different roles and activities of larger and smaller churches in Hungarian civil society, especially Catholic congregations and smaller communities, new religious movements and groups, the "official church," and the "civil church," Churches and religious communities in Hungary are still too rigid in their institutional forms to become an organic part of civil society. To preserve their unique calling churches have to play the role as a participant of a special form of civil society--the "contrast-society." Only churches institutionalized in an appropriate way will be able to accommodate civil society without being assimilated by it. Thus, churches can become part of civil society mainly in the form of a dialogue. Hungarian churches, religious groups, and movements are just at the beginning of a promising process.