June 25th, 2012

Orbán says government to link takeover of public services by religious groups to size of different faith communities

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The government is preparing a proposal to ensure that religious organisations should not take over more public institutions, such as schools, than the size of a given community justifies, Prime Minister Viktor Orban told reporters on Monday.

Orban replied to concerns over the Evangelical Christian Congregation of Faith (Hit Gyulekezete) recently taking over a number of schools from local governments in Hungary.

The prime minister said that Human Resources Minister Zoltan Balog and Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen were in charge of a government proposal seeking to keep the number of institutions run by religious organisations in proportion.

Otherwise, he said, “the role of the given church in Hungary’s religious life and the scope of its services would not be in line”.

MTI (Magyar Távirati Iroda) is the Hungarian news agency.
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  • hamhock

    Hit Gyulekezete is an Israel supported misleading group of satanists that should never have been allowed to hold a service in Hungary or anywhere…

  • http://www.allhungary.hu Erik D’Amato

    Misleading Satanists!

  • Viking

    So now the Fidesz State should control the Church?

    Or is it just that the mental midgets in KDNP do not trust ‘their’ church to keep sovereignty, when getting some competition from a small bunch of much more faithful Hungarians?

    On the other hand, it is classic Fidesz-logic:
    * The oligarchs who control Fidesz gets the State money and the Church that Fidesz control, gets the no competition in ‘saving the Hungarian Soul/s/’

  • Viking

    religious organisations should not take over more public institutions, such as schools, than the size of a given community justifies
    —

    This will be an interesting math to do
    * How will this be calculated?

    - Number of church-visitors?

    - Number of people who stated in latest census that they belong to a certain church (only done every 10 years)?

    - Amount/Number of 1% tax contributions?
    ..

    The stats are like this:
    * Faith Church, Hungary (Hit Gyulekezete) is one of Europe’s largest pentecostal-evangelical Christian churches, and the country’s fourth most supported church (based on the 1% tax designation to churches). It kept its official church status after the Orbán government’s 2011 reduction of the number of churches.

    * Today more than 60,000 believers regularly attend worship services

    * According to the last census in Hungary the Faith Church was not among the four biggest churches

    * There are about three hundred local church branches of Faith Church functioning all around the country
    ..

    One of the more sympathec thing with this type of religious organisation is:
    “Faith Church follows the biblical model of the self-supporting church. It does not receive any other financial support from the state, aside from the 1% tax designations for churches and the normatives available to schools”
    (-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_Church,_Hungary)

    Of course the Kadarists of today’s Hungary, as pre-1990 hate them
    (“Faith Church was founded in 1979 by a group of seven Hungarian believers, led by Pastor Sándor Németh, who leads the church until today. The independent Pentecostal-Charismatic church could only conduct its worship services illegally during the years of the Communist regime. Its activities and leaders were monitored by the Communist secret service. By 1989, membership reached 2000 people. In 1989, the Hungarian State declared Faith Church a recognized denomination based on the 1895. XLIII. Act.”)

    Probably we will be seeing Fidesz opens up yet another front-line in their loosing battle with the surrounding world, with upcoming legal defeats and public condemnation for discriminating organisations that Fidesz cannot control, directly or via its State

    For the Pentecostal movement, all over the world, the ‘Hungarian case’ will be a great rally-cause, portraying Hungary even more negatively world-wide

  • Igazi Magyar

    @ Viking – it’s an easy calculation. Religious groups that become partisan supporters of Fidesz will get any and all money they ask for. Religious groups that focus on religion will be punished by removal of the blessings of the ruling party.

  • Speechless

    Misleading Satanists sounds way out cool, id go for that, bet they play good music too…

    • Vidra

      Sounds like a great name for a band. Bet they do a belting version of “Devil in Disguise”.

      There seem to be as many nutters in Hungary who follow these conspiracy theories as there are in the whole USA. Today’s churches aren’t after souls, just money, and former church school students tend to be quite generous to their old alma mater.

  • judas

    hammcock,

    it is the other way around:

    the christian faith churches are supporting israel and not
    israel is supporting the faith churches.

    the question is why and how long?

  • Nobby Stiles

    Can someone explain why a large christian organization would be funded by Israel? It doesn’t really make sense, you know.

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