Tolerance towards others, other cultures and other religions can only extend so far as it allows us to preserve ourselves, our communities, our culture and our way of life, János Lázár said at a conference held on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of the Diet of Torda of 1568 pronouncing religious freedom.

The Minister heading the Prime Minister’s Office stressed in the Upper House Hall of the Parliament Building that tolerance without boundaries and limits is in actual fact not tolerance at all, but submission, “collective and passive euthanasia, pan-national suicide”.

Mr Lázár highlighted that the leaders of Transylvania have remained sober, European and Hungarian for 450 years. “They have remained patient and tolerant Christians”, and “warriors of the Hungarian frontier who require everyone to respect borders”.

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“The noblemen of Torda brought the previously divided European believers of Christ to a common denominator, and thereby contributed to the birth and substance of the common European identity which we have almost forgotten in the past few decades”, the Minister said.

The perhaps greatest challenge of the century, the migration crisis and the ever spreading Islamisation of the Western world remind and warn us of the existence, content and importance of identity, he added.

According to Mr Lázár the history of the Unitarians is also a history of the vulnerability of European identity and the European way of life. The fourth Torda congregation suffered a more severe blow from the Counter-Reformation, and centuries later from absolutism after the 1848-49 freedom fight than other Christian congregations. Unitarians therefore had to wait for the exercise of their equal rights until the legislation that followed the Austro-Hungarian Compromise.

He added that the European form of life – of which Christian freedom of religion and almost unlimited tolerance towards other religions are an important pillar – even came under threat from tyrants born and socialised in Europe. During Ceausescu’s tyranny Unitarians in Transylvania lived under double oppression: they were persecuted for being Hungarian and for their faith all at once.

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The community could finally survive the oppression of tyrants because “Europeans have always been in a majority against those who sought to eliminate Europe, culture, identity and our way of life”.

At the same time, “it is terrifying just to think about” the threat European Christians, in particular Unitarians with their history full of adversity, European nations and women enjoying full equality in Europe will face if a way of thinking prevails in Europe which sees these things as heresies, rather than as values, Mr Lázár added.

Speaker of the House László Kövér pointed out in his address that the Hungarian people crushed on the battlefield of Mohács which later also lost its unity and sovereignty “was condemned by European history makers to extinction”, but it received a gift from European culture in possession of which it was able to survive as a Hungarian nation. This gift was Reformation “conveying the blessing of religious life, education and culture in the mother tongue”.

“Our ancestors, however, did not remain in debt to European culture.”

One of the gifts of the Hungarian people to the world was the Edict of Torda on religious peace passed in 1568 which “was a sensational deed for the whole world”, a milestone not only of European legal history, but also of European intellectual and spiritual history. The other gift was Unitarianism itself, and the Unitarian Church in Hungary that was built upon its foundations, the Speaker of the House said.

“For us, Hungarians today it is a moral duty to appreciate the outstanding performance of our forerunners, and to protect and support the community which found the determining element of its identity in this faith”, Mr Kövér said.

The Unitarian Church in Hungary dates its foundation from the promulgation of the edict on religious matters passed by the Diet of Torda in 1568. The Transylvanian Diet held in Torda between 6 and 13 January pronounced religious freedom for the first time, laying down the freedom and equality of the four religions, Catholic, Evangelical, Reformed and Unitarian.

The Transylvanian Hungarian Unitarian church was established by Transylvanian Reformer Ferenc Dávid who was born in Kolozsvár in around 1520.

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In consequence of the Treaty of Trianon and communism, the churches in Transylvania and Hungary operated as separate entities for decades. In 2012 the church restored its organisational unity with its seat in Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca).

Unitarians reject the idea of the Holy Trinity, meaning that they recognise a single divine entity. One may often see the inscription “God is one” at the entrance of Unitarian churches.

There are some 65,000 Unitarians in Transylvania, and around seven thousand in Hungary.

(MTI)