Efforts of the Egervári movement in the first half of 1977 to achieve a settlement

Abstract

This study is concerned with a turbulent phase of the history of the Hungarian Seventh-day Adventist Church. In 1975/76 there developed a protest movement within the church against the leadership in office that had spread to the whole of Hungary. The protesters accused the leaders of abusing fundamental Adventist faith priciples and they soon found themselves disfellowshipped from the community as a consequence. There were many, too, who left voluntarily to make their stand manifest. The number of the movement’s supporters had soon increased to a thousand, which, taken the total church membership of about five thousand, is quite significant. Having been pushed out of the church and forced to go underground, the protesters made several attempts to settle their case. One such step was that in 1977 they turned to Adventist leader Gáspár Lovas in Czechoslovakia so that they could join the Slovakian Union. The Hungarian Union leaders took action immediately to prevent this, so the group had their request for admission rejected. As a next step they appealed to party chief János Kádár against repeated harassment by the authorities. They quoted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), in force from 1976, and argued that the Hungarian Nazarenes of Hungary ultimately gained state recognion as a denomination in 1977. Nevertheless the case of the Egervári group had not been settled during the Kádár regime.