Reformed Church in Hungary

Reformed Church in Hungary
Logo of the Reformed Church in Hungary.
Classification	Protestant
Orientation	Calvinist
Theology	Reformed
Polity	Episcopal
Associations	Hungarian Reformed Church, World Council of Churches, World Communion of Reformed Churches, Conference of European Churches, Community of Protestant Churches in Europe, Ecumenical Council of Churches in Hungary
Region	Hungary
Origin	1567
Congregations	1,249
Members	2,500,000
Ministers	1,550
Official website	http://www.reformatus.hu/english/

The Reformed Church in Hungary (Hungarian: Magyarországi Református Egyház) is the largest Protestant church in Hungary. Today, it is made up of 1,249 congregations in 27 Presbyteries and four Church districts and has a membership of over 1.6 million, making it second only to the Roman Catholic Church in terms of size. Its practices reflect a Calvinist theology, for which the Hungarian term is református.

The Reformation spread to Hungary during the 16th century from Geneva, Switzerland. John Calvin encouraged and trained thousands of men to distribute the gospel across the continent, which included the mass printing of the Bible and Christian works in the local languages.

In the 16th century, Hungary was divided into three parts. The northwest came under Habsburg rule, the Eastern part of the kingdom and Transylvania (vassal state) under the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Turks did not urge Muslim conversion among the conquered and Reformation thus spread through the Turkish occupied territories. Only in the Habsburg-ruled Western Hungary was this process halted by the strong counter-Reformation policy of the Empire.

A Reformed Constitutional Synod was held in 1567 in Debrecen, the main hub of Hungarian Calvinism, where the Second Helvetic Confession was adopted as the official confession of Hungarian Calvinists.

In the late 17th century, all of Hungary was gradually liberated from the Turks by a pan-European alliance led by the Habsburgs. After this, the Habsburg Emperors started to exercise their very aggressive counter-Reformation policy on the liberated territories. Consequently, in the third part of the 17th century and in most of the 18th century, Hungarian Protestants were viewed as second-class citizens in Hungary. Imperial edicts such as the Resolutio Carolina of 1731, settled the status of Protestant churches.

Only the end of the 18th century brought some relief to the Hungarian Reformed Church. Finally, the 1867 establishment of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, gave free way for the emancipation of Hungarian Protestants. In 1881, for the first time in an almost 400-year-long history, the four Hungarian Reformed Church Districts together with the Transylvanian Reformed Church held a united Synod meeting in the city of Debrecen. The modern Hungarian Reformed Church was born there at the Debrecen Synod of 1881. The inner hierarchy and the synodal-presbyterian system of the Reformed Church remains nearly unchanged from that time.