To Serve with Words, Letters and Deeds - The First Stage of the Református Család (Reformed Family) Magazine’s Publication (1929-1944)

Abstract

" The study firstly addresses the crisis period, which made the creation of the periodical necessary. The first issue was published in 1929, but our time travel to understand the era needs to take us back at least to the 19th century since the roots of the crisis can be found there: the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848; the worker optimism following the 1867 Austro-Hungarian Compromise, which, in addition to spectacular results, further deepened the economic and ethnic gap between the various strata of the population; the people-centred, fickle ideological basis of theological liberalism; the horrors of World War I, the Republic of Councils of Hungary, the Treaty of Trianon. The second main topic outlines one of the successful areas of crisis management, i.e. the domestic mission aspirations unfolding in the Transylvanian Reformed Church District: the role of theology professors, Vécs Society, associations mobilizing certain strata of church members, and related press releases and press products. The third chapter presents the first release period of Református Család from 1929 to 1944: objectives of the periodical, columns, readers, editors-writers. Keywords: the Hungarian Reformed community in Transylvania, crisis period, home/domestic mission, Transylvanian Reformed Women’s Association (1928–1944), Református Család periodical (1929–1944)."