Journal index

The Women’s Alliance of the Királyhágómellék Reformed Church District was established eighty five years ago, on 3 September 1931, 11 years after the formation of this Hungarian church body geographically covering the western part of today’s Romania. Besides providing a historic background with unique details, our study pays a tribute to the devotion and immense work of the Reformed women on behalf of the Church. The Women’s Alliance has played a most important missionary role within the Királyhágómellék Reformed Church District.

We are always seeking for the sense of the life, for ourselves and for the place in our family and community. Religion shows a new way to us, according to Jesus Christ’s principles. The son of God not only created a religion, but gave us an example how to live, and sacrifice himself for us. Sándor Karácsony reckons religion as a spiritual behavior, the base of our social contacts. We have to see into our lives and character according to the message of Jesus Christ. The right and appropriate personality can be evolved by individual training.

The views of Sándor Karácsony about religious education can be clearly discerned from his writings. The main task of reformed pedagogy is to activate continuously the divine notions in this continuously changing world. Protestant teachers must accomplish their daily work according to the Gospel of Christ. The Hungarian Reformed Church was a so-called “church of schools” for hundreds of years. This means that even between WWI and WWII it owned more schools than churches. The number of Reformed schools is significant even today. Sándor Karácsony claims that only Reformed people and communities are able to maintain Reformed schools by people who “are ready to serve and sacrifice themselves” for this cause (Karácsony, Sándor: A magyarok Istene. Széphalom Könyvműhely, Budapest 2004, 172).

Our chronological study reflects on how the Reformed typography of Nagyvárad, being affiliated with the Reformed Church, enriched our catechism bibliography. In this respect, there were four remarkable periods in the printing history of Nagyvárad city. This paper deals with (1) the Hoffhalter era in the mid-16th century, (2) the period of Ábrahám Szenczi Kertész, between 1640 and 1660, (3) the first half of the 20th century, the Károly Béres era, and (4) the period since 1990.