Religion: Christians Behind the Curtain

Should a Christian church under a Communist regime resist, and be driven underground? Or should it bow to the state for the sake of continuing as an organized entity? Or something in between? These are not academic questions in China and Poland, in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Rumania, whose Christians sometimes feel that their Western brethren may be a bit too impatient for a new age of catacombs.

Last week the National Lutheran Council was studying a tortured message on the subject from eight top-ranking leaders of the Hungarian Lutheran Church. The Hungarian Lutherans said they felt that it was better to continue as a congregation in being, rather than to court destruction by resisting the state. "It is after a decision by faith and trusting in God alone that the Hungarian Lutheran Church has taken the way which it considers a narrow path in the present world . . ." Surely the church "might subsist in Hungary and perform its task under no more adverse circumstances than the apostles had in the Roman Empire. We cannot, therefore, take the responsibility for starting a so-called Church Resistance . . ."

The message suggested that Hungary's Communist government is God's judgment on the church for "worldliness." Western Lutherans, the Hungarians noted, should quit trying to prod their Hungarian brethren into more sturdy opposition to the Communists. "They might consider if it is of any use for the Hungarian Church of Jesus Christ to give . . . expression to statements which are frequently based on wrong information and . . . are appropriate for aggravating our position . . ." Though the church is grateful for all the financial and material aid that has come from overseas, they cannot accept any conditions along with it, or any "sort of dependence on the donors."

U.S. Lutherans, dissatisfied with what they consider the Hungarian church's lukewarm defense of Bishop Lajos Ordass, who is serving a two-year prison term for alleged improper registering of funds received from the U.S., have sent no aid to Hungary for the past two years. The Hungarian message did not tend to change their minds. Said Dr. Paul Empie, executive director of the National Lutheran Council: "The statement is an obvious effort to show that they have a unique situation which we in the West are in no position to judge . . . But until our delegation can get there and confirm the needs and insure the proper use of the funds, we are hardly free to send additional money."