Spatial and temporal changes in the relationship between church and state in Hungary

Abstract

Hungary is located in the Carpatho–Pannonian area and has been the interface at which European Catholicism, Protestantism, Orthodoxy and Judaism have met and mixed for nearly 500 years. The Hungarian state was founded in the 10th and 11th centuries with Catholic support. This was well before the emergence of the modern Hungarian nation in the 18th and 19th centuries on the basis of a mix with Protestantism. During the latter period, Hungarians were followers of several confessions. In spite of this, the Catholic Church generally managed to retain its politically dominant position until 1946, and the elimination of kingdom. In 1949, the Hungarian state and the churches were officially separated. This was followed by an era of atheist, anticlerical policy by the communist totalitarian regime until 1989. Since then state–church relations have largely conformed to European norms and were based on a division of tasks and cooperation. Churches in Hungary played an important role in maintaining civil society and ideas of national consciousness during the totalitarian communist regime. That is why religious conviction and ecclesiastic affairs have a broader political context here than in the west. In the second half of the 20th century, secularisation accelerated by state support was curbed and reversed due to a religious revival, which took place mainly in rural areas following the change in political regime. The scale of religious pluralism was related to the arrival of people who belonged to non-traditional confessions.