Journal index

The pastoral training and professional workshop named “Spirituality and Mission in the Church” held its conference titled “Spiritual Hunger 7.0” on March 2, 2023, at the Ráday House in Budapest. The topic of this was the problem of pastoral care. Márton Járay reported on the results of a survey conducted among Lutheran ministers in Hungary in his presentation titled “The Lost Shepherd - Lessons from a Pastoral Research”.

In Central and Eastern Europe, the pluriform cultural historical picture was determined by the flourishing of national arts, as well as the arrival and establishment of artists from countries far away. The painter Iacob Graf, spelled in Hungarian as Jakab Gráf, arrived from Switzerland to Transylvania. His heritage is of exceptional documentary value, but he was also a noticeable teacher of art. Through several decades he laid the foundations of the pedagogy of drawing and directed many generations towards the love of arts.

In the year 1859 the French Alphonse Esquiros made this remark in his itinerary: “Holland is one of the most religious countries of the earth; the Bible is really popular there.” In my lecture I outline the history of the personal and family reading of the Bible in the Netherlands during the last 5 centuries, including the current situation.Notable new research showed that in the Late Middle Ages in urban regions, in Holland as well, the Bible was spread in the national languages in wide circles of the society and was read among literate laymen. The Reformation built on this broadly recognisable interest or even hunger for the knowledge of the Bible. With the help of the newly discovered technique of printing and school teaching, and due to the fundamental reorientation of religious life through the Reformation – the Christian faith having only one source: the Bible – an intensive personal and family reading of the Bible began.