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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, AUGUST 30, 1985
PAGE 13
The explana·tion must ·be sought, to use the crude terms of
economics, on the demand as well as the supply side.
And the
great promoter of religious demand is, of course, communism. As
Lech Walesa once remarked: "If you take the example of what we
have in our shops, then•••communism has done very little for us.
But if you take the example of what we have in our souls, then I
answer that communism has done a great deal for us. In fact our
souls contain exactly the opposite of what they wanted.
They
wanted us not to believe in God, and our churches are full."•.•
To be sure, there are still many practising young communists; but
even in East Germany I do not remember ever having met a
believing one. In the 1970s this ideological failure was to a
considerable extent covered up by a relative economic success-
but as the standard of living stagnates, or declines, material
goods can no longer fill the ideological vacuum. Many young peo
ple seek in Christianity••. an escape from this hopeless-seeming
world of materialism without materials•••• ��
It inevitably leaves one wondering how deep the religious revival
goes: running, as it does, dead against the seemingly ineluctable
secularisation of the modern world. If the Red Army departed and
East Central Europe was given democratic capitalism tomorrow, for
how long would the churches remain full? To recall Walesa's re
mark: if there was more in the shops would there be less in their
souls?
Is that also part of the explanation of the relative
weakness of Christianity in Hungary?
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau