150 Years of the Scottish-Hungarian Scholarship

This is a quite remarkable partnership that we are celebrating and to which we are committing as we look to the future.

The Bursary Scheme for Hungarian students was established within the Free Church of Scotland in 1863. There is still a remnant of the Free Church left in Scotland, but the real historic continuity of our friendship and partnership belongs within the present day Church of Scotland which was formed in 1929 when finally (and almost completely) the churches in Scotland were reunited.

Back in 1863, however, what an adventure it must have been for students from the Reformed Church in Hungary to study in Scotland at one of the Free Church theological colleges in Edinburgh, Glasgow; and Aberdeen.  Reading the history of this, it is remarkable that in the first ten years from 1865 to 1875 ten Hungarian students passed through one or another of the Free Church theological colleges. The numbers then rose and from 1875 to 1890, the Free Church was supporting an average of three to four students each year, with most going to New College.  

From 1890 to 1914, the average number was two or three students each year, so when you add up the number of students studying in Scotland in these early years it comes to somewhere around 100 and when you pour that 100 students into the Hungarian ministerial mix – it means that Scotland and Scottish theology has found its way into the DNA of your reformed tradition. 

Scots can be mean and miserable, and our brand of Calvinism can be severe and somewhat joyless! Therefore I sincerely hope, that when the pluses (+s) and minuses (-s) of Scottish influence are calculated on the balance sheet of your church life – that you are able to report a positive balance.

I pray that you have enjoyed the good things of our religious culture and values. We can be generous, caring and warm; we know how to be enthusiastic, committed and gracious. These are the things of our life in the Lord Jesus Christ that I hope you have absorbed into your culture and into your Church. 

In 1863 the aim in starting a bursary programme was to further develop the aims and ideals being promoted through the Scottish Mission in Budapest: to strengthen links between the historic Reformed Churches in Scotland and Hungary, to enrich educational opportunities for leaders of the Hungarian Reformed Church, and to promote evangelistic work on the part of the Hungarian Reformed Church. Over the years we have seen that aim come to fruition in so many ways and so many lives. 

The historic connections go back centuries, but with the Scottish Mission and the influx of Scottish Presbyterian missionaries, and then the Bursary Programme, they became cemented.

The first bursar, Ferenc Balogh, became a leading figure in promoting home mission work and theological education in Pest.  Another bursar was Lajos Csiki, who studied at New College, Edinburgh, and who later served as professor of practical theology at Debrecen Reformed College from 1881 to 1914.  He translated Scottish theological writings into Hungarian, and promoted Scottish programmes for urban ministry and home mission. 

More recently, bursarssuch as Professor Peter Balla of the Reformed University in Budapest, or Professor Richard Horcik of Debrecen Reformed University, have taken on positions of great responsibility within the Hungarian Church, as ministers, evangelists, teachers and professors.  Their time of study introduced them not just to Scottish influences, but also wider international theological and biblical scholarship and methods of witness and service, both for serving at home and abroad. And we must mention Dr Abraham Kovacs. While not technically a bursar, his research and writings on the interplay of the Scottish Mission and the Hungarian Reformed have been so very useful.

Over the years, we can note the tremendous influence of this great cloud of witnesses who studied in Scotland. Whether taking a lead from the Scottish Mission and becoming active in educational and medical mission work among the urban poor in different parts of Hungary, or working with the Jewish community, particularly in Budapest, or in urban church building, or teaching, or ministering, we can see that they contributed in significant ways to the revival of the Hungarian Reformed Church in the later nineteenth century. Also, during the Cold War the bursaries provided a means by which the Hungarian Church retained connections with the outside world, and helped us in Scotland appreciate the reality of life under communism and its complexities for church people. 

One of the aims of the Scottish Mission from its outset was to become part of the local church and be integrated within it. This it achieved very early on. A good example is the expulsion of the missionaries in the 1870s when local Hungarians took on the work of the Mission and kept its work alive and developing. The same was true in the 1940s when the missionaries, other than Jane Haining, went home, and again during the Cold War when Bursars ministered at the Mission to those worshipping in English in Hungary. And today it is good to know of the work of the Scottish congregation, as a congregation of the RCH also, in welcoming the stranger and reaching out to the refugee and asylum seekers, and bringing its own particular gifts to Christian witness in Hungary today, and in strengthening our relations as churches in partnership at opposite ends of Europe. 

Now on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Bursary programme we look to the future. We have so much to share and in today’s environment our partnership must be the two way street it has become. 

I am delighted to sign this Memorandum of Commitment and look forward to a continuing exchange of people and ideas. We have so many common agendas – in care for the poor, concern for the refugees, in promoting social justice and caring for the planet; the list of our shared responsibilities, under God, is extensive and, with all of you, I pray that we go on from here to learn much from each other. 

Blessings and peace -  Áldás és békesség  

Rt Rev John Chalmers

Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland

March 2015