New Religious Movements’ Opinions on the Hungarian Society

by Péter Török, Department for the Studies of Religion, University of Szeged, Hungary
A paper presented at the CESNUR 2003 conference, Vilnius, Lithuania. Preliminary version. Do not reproduce or quote without the consent of the author.

While several works have studied the reception of new religious movements (NRMs) in different societies[1], it has been rarely, if ever attempted to probe systematically how NRMs evaluate their relationship with a particular society. The Department for the Studies of Religion at the University of Szeged in Hungary has had the opportunity to conduct a three-staged systematic research of NRMs in the country. The first stage is a semi-structured interview[2] with the leaders of the NRMs, which is followed by a questionnaire survey conducted among the members of several movements. In the third phase, a so-called creed-analysis closes our research.

The first phase, where the leaders of NRMs talked about their belief system, history, demographic features, geographical location, relation to the host society and other churches, etc. in the framework of the semi-structured interview, is already finished. The 68 interviews covered about two thirds (63 percent) of the registered churches[3] in Hungary. This calculation of the ‘response rate' is very conservative, because if we accepted the claim of the Prime Minister's Office that at least 25 percent of the 135 registered churches were not functioning, the response rate would be 77 percent[4]. Before presenting the findings on NRMs' opinions on Hungarian society, I have to briefly clarify some definitional problems and describe these religious organizations.

The Problems of Defining New Religious Movements in Hungary

According to an internationally recognized scholar of sociology, “most of the movements referred to as part of the current wave of new religious movements are new in that they have become visible in their present form since the Second World War"[5]. In the societies of Central and Eastern Europe, however, some religious organizations existed well before the end of World War II, but under the Communist era their operation was illegal or allowed only under severely restricted conditions[6]. As a consequence, they could function visibly only after 1990. The International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), for example, does not have a long institutional background[7], let alone in this region of Europe, but in 1998, Hungarians were more familiar with it than with the different traditional orthodox churches, the Unitarians, Adventists or Methodists.[8] All in all, these older religious organizations along with several others are also ‘new' to the Hungarians. Consequently, with the exception of the so-called historical churches[9], we had to include all the other registered churches in our departmental research. This necessity, originating from the Communist heritage of the country, will create an opportunity to compare and contrast the opinions of the ‘old' and new NRMs on the Hungarian society. However, a brief description of the interviewed churches must precede.

General Characteristics of the Interviewed Churches

The characterization of Hungarian NRMs requires a two-stepped proceeding. First a few words describe the basic characteristics of all the interviewed Hungarian NRMs, which is followed by a short description of those movements which were established under Communism or after its fall.

General Characterization

Most of the so-called non-historical Hungarian churches are rather young. Two thirds of them were established after 1987, half of them after the fall of Communism (1990). Similarly, two thirds of the surveyed smaller churches are of Christian origins. The second largest religious tradition is Buddhism with eight different ‘churches'[10]. About 10 percent of the interviewed churches do not have an organizationally accepted creed, in other words, they lack the necessary condition of a unified ideological background. Similarly, the proportion of communities without precise criteria for membership is 10 percent. At least in theory, mixed membership[11] is possible in two thirds of these religious organizations.

It cannot be said that the membership of these young churches would also be young. Only a third of the interviewed leaders claimed that their members are rather young. Women make up the majority of members in two thirds of these groups, however, the leaders are, without exception, men. With regard to their moral teaching, we can say that they are rather conservative. In an 8-item index, investigating whether pre-marital and extramarital sexuality, homosexuality, birth control, etc. is allowed, more then half of the interviewed churches (53 percent) achieved only two points or even less.

NRMs established under or after the fall of Communism

Churches of Christian faith in the subgroup of NRMs established in the post-Communist era make up only 54 percent, reflecting the influx of other religious traditions. These post-Communist NRMs are characterized by a greater proportion of groups without an organizationally accepted creed (18 percent) or precise criteria for membership (18 percent). The possibility of mixed membership is also somewhat higher (72 percent) than the average of all the interviewed churches. In other words, post-Communist NRMs give the impression to be less organized. These groups, furthermore, seem to attract in greater proportion the youth; almost half of them (47 percent) reported a younger than average membership. In their gender distribution and moral teaching, however, these groups did not seem to differ from the other interviewed churches.

New Religious Movements' Opinions on Hungarian Society

The interviewed leaders could express their opinion on the Hungarian society in five different areas. Thus I will present their

Ø    general opinion on the Hungarian society in comparison with that on the neighboring countries, the US and France
Ø    evaluation of the three post-Communist governments
Ø    satisfaction with the legal regulations of establishing churches
Ø    opinion on the Hungarian media
Ø    satisfaction with public education

General opinion on the Hungarian Society
In general, the responding leaders of the non-historical churches consider the attitude of the Hungarian society towards them as friendly: the average of the answers given on a five-point scale was 3.83. In itself, this number would not say much, because these leaders are suspicious of any research conducted among them. The echoes of the often chanted Communist slogan about the ‘good relationship between the government and the churches' are still in their ears and more so in their memories. Therefore, I also asked about their brethren's relationship with the governments of the neighboring countries. This question seemed necessary not only to relate the Hungarian situation to other societies but also because we generally lack information on the opinion of NRMs on their host societies in this region. Obviously, only those communities were able to reply to these questions which have functioning communities in the neighboring countries. According to the data presented in Table 1, even in this comparison, the position of the Hungarian society is rather good.

Table 1: The Rank Order of the Countries, Based on the Evaluation of the Leaders of Hungarian NRMs in 2002.