Speaking the word when words are compromised. Proposed date of commemoration: August 14.
On that day in March 1948 there was another Hungarian with Lajos Ordass (1901–1978) on the plane to Zürich, a senior of the Methodist church. Visibly upset, he asked Lajos for a private meeting once they’d landed. Upon their safe arrival in Switzerland, the man told his story: how he’d been arrested in Budapest, interrogated about his overseas contacts—and asked what he knew about Lajos. He’d only been allowed to leave the country on the condition that he spy on Lajos during the trip, but in defiance of government pressure he turned over to Lajos the list of questions he’d been instructed to ask. He only dared to tell Lajos these things at all because he was planning to escape, never to return to Hungary.
Despite the warning Lajos returned home, bracing himself for the onslaught.
He’d been bishop for three years already in the most trying circumstances imaginable. His election came on the heels of World War II. Hungary was Hitler’s road into Yugoslavia, and bombs starting falling in 1942. By 1944 the nation was occupied by the Nazis, and within a few months of that the Soviets mounted their counter-invasion. Lajos kept busy helping Jews escape, hiding other targeted persons, and burying the dead. By the end of the war there was no electricity, no running water, and no food. The stumps of old altar candles were the only source of light. Installed to his new office in September 1945 amidst massive inflation—a train trip from Budapest to the Lutheran seminary in Sopron cost billions—Lajos was called to rebuild his country, both physically and spiritually.
He was equal to the task. Relief from foreign churches didn’t appear until the winter of 1946–47, but the results were inspiring and led to the “multiplying” of food, as Lajos put it: his people rediscovered their own ingenuity and generosity. By 1948 he’d managed to visit almost all one hundred congregations in his diocese and so earned the trust and respect of his pastors. He spent five months abroad in 1947, the first Hungarian Lutheran pastor to leave the country since the war began, and attended the constituting assembly of the Lutheran World Federation in Lund, Sweden.
But already by then the political situation was deteriorating. With the establishment of a socialist government in 1945, Lajos had been asked to chair a committee investigating the political stance of his church’s pastors and teachers. He flatly refused. Denied this means of gaining control, “people’s courts” sprang up all over the country, a vigilante attempt to accuse Christians and impose penalties upon them. Lajos’s fellow bishop Zoltán Túróczy was tried and sentenced to ten years by just such a court; it was a number of months before Lajos and others got him out. Then the state demanded right of approval for all radio broadcasts. Recognizing the censorship for what it was, Lajos refused, and the Lutheran hour ended up being nothing but music. The historic Protestant holidays of Reformation Day and Good Friday were dropped from the calendar, and the faithful were expected to turn up at their state-mandated posts anyway.
The Communist Party gained total control over the Hungarian nation in 1948. It promptly authored “An Agreement with the Lutheran Church.” The church was to hand over its extensive network of schools to the government. Lajos himself had been educated in one of them, as had a number of Nobel Prize winners. In return, the government would maintain the practice of offering religious education in all schools and support the clergy financially. It was not an honest negotiation and Lajos knew it. Even if the conditions were to be upheld by the state—which he doubted—the simple fact was that the Agreement was backed by a threat. If the church didn’t voluntarily hand over the schools, the state would take them anyway, and without the added perquisites. Lajos refused to cooperate. In June, all the schools were seized.
Then, on August 24, Lajos was arrested along with two other pastors. His home was searched and many of his books and private papers were stolen, never to be returned. After being left alone in a room most of the day without food or drink, he was interrogated and accused of having embezzled thousands of dollars earmarked for the church during his visit to the U.S. the year before. He was released the next day but told that he had until September 8 at noon to relinquish his office as bishop or leave the country.
Lajos did neither. He continued to carry out his usual duties as if nothing had happened. In his Sunday sermon he remarked, “The love of God and the tests he sends us do not exclude each other.” It was to be his last public sermon for eight years.
The police arrived on the evening of the 8th and took Lajos into custody until his trial. It was a classic Soviet show trial: a sheer fabrication to remove Lajos from office. His defense lawyer, by all accounts, did a brilliant job of exposing the frail tissue of lies that made up the case against the bishop. Lajos himself was granted an opportunity to speak as the trial wrapped up. He said:
“Honored Presiding Judge, Honored Special Court! I need not add much to what my defense attorney said regarding my case. That is why I want to claim your attention only for a brief time. The proceedings against me have now lasted five weeks. During this time I have had plenty of time to ask myself: Did I violate any law? Did I neglect something? Does my conscience accuse me regarding any detail? I have repeated these questions of self-examination also before God in prayer. The answer I received from God was an infinite tranquility of the soul, a tranquility that has carried me without interruption for these five weeks…
“You now withdraw in order to decide the verdict. It is your task to weigh and to examine everything that has been said about me according to your conscience. I do not know what kind of verdict will be returned. If your conscience compels you to an acquittal, then the wounds I carry away from my battle for society will not be so bloody and painful, so that I will be able to do my work with complete dedication and the same fervor as before. It is my intention to continue my service. God will help me to forget these five weeks. I am prepared to continue my service for my homeland and for my church.
“It is also possible that you will find me guilty after your consideration and impose a punishment on me. In that case I will accept it peacefully and with humility in my heart. If I am convicted, then the conviction will become a veil that hides God’s will from me and renders it incomprehensible to me. But I will accept it from the hand of God without grumbling. One thing I know—namely, that whatever happens to me is God’s beneficial will.”
On the first of October a verdict of guilty was handed down. Lajos was sentenced to two years in prison, loss of his office and his civil rights for five years, and a fine of three thousand forint.
Thus began Lajos’s fifteen-month stint in the Star Prison in Szeged, in the same room with fifteen Catholic priests. Ecumenical cooperation takes on new meaning in the face of persecution. Despite the historically hostile relationship between Catholics and Lutherans in Hungary, the men got along smoothly at all times, and the priests even invited Lajos to preach for them on Christmas Day.
The truth was that Lajos desperately needed their support and encouragement. For at right about the same time he was informed that the Lutheran church had caved in and signed the Agreement with the state after all. Lajos was appalled. It was a long time before he learned that the state had already replaced the church’s duly elected officials with its own puppets and collaborators. Nor did he realize how many pastors voted in favor of the Agreement only in the hope that it would get Lajos out of prison. But cooperation with liars accomplishes nothing.
The result was that the state was more determined than ever to silence Lajos and get a new bishop in his place. Deputy Prime Minister Mátyás Rákosi, whose name is now synonymous in Hungary with totalitarian terror, demanded of Lajos’s old friend and colleague Túróczy to have Lajos convicted by an ecclesiastical court and depose him. Túróczy refused. Then Rákosi made a sweeter offer: get Lajos to withdraw from office willingly, and they’d give him a political pardon and a state pension. Túróczy was willing to approach Lajos with this arrangement.
Túróczy visited his fellow bishop in prison and explained all the details. Lajos asked for an hour and a half to consider the matter alone and in silence.
What is the right way for a Christian to behave in relationship to the government—and what difference does it make if the government works for good or for evil? Lajos turned to his Bible for help. First he read Romans 13 (“whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment”) and then Acts 5 (“We must obey God rather than men”). At last he came to Acts 16. Paul and Silas, he read, had been unjustly imprisoned without due process, but the next day the magistrates said they could go free. Paul responded indignantly, “They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and do they now throw us out secretly? No! Let them come themselves and take us out.”
There was Lajos’s answer. He would not settle for a pardon, as if he had in fact done wrong, but demanded an acquittal acknowledging his innocence. When Túróczy returned, Lajos declined the offer of release.
When he rejoined his prison mates, Lajos discovered that all fifteen Catholic priests had been praying for him the whole time, that he might remain steadfast and not lose his soul.
Lajos’s defiance only infuriated the state authorities all the more. In March 1950 they transferred him to another prison, where he lived out the rest of his sentence in solitary confinement. Knowing full well the damaging psychological effects of such treatment, Lajos immediately set about creating a daily schedule for himself, which he scratched into the back of the door with a nail he’d found.
He began the day by reconstructing a chapter from the Gospels in English, reciting it quietly to himself, and finishing up with extemporaneous prayer, the Lord’s prayer, and a blessing. This became the basis for a reflection on Christ’s passion, published in 1956 in English as At the Foot of the Cross after the manuscript had been smuggled out of the country.
Next on his agenda were biographical sketches of people he’d met, also later to become a book; hymns he’d learned by heart; and remembering what he’d learned of stenography, plus creating new stenographic symbols for theological terms. After lunch he spent an hour telling jokes and funny anecdotes arranged by theme—he’d always been a great connoisseur of humor—at times laughing so loud that the guards came rushing into his room, afraid he’d become deranged!
As the afternoon progressed, Lajos imagined himself paying visits to all the churches in his diocese and giving advice on everything from evangelism to roof repair. This was followed by plotting out a novel about a prisoner under the same regime, published in English in 1960 as The Indictment. The day ended with Hungarian folk songs, a Gospel recitation in Swedish, further prayers, an evening hymn, and the Aaronic blessing. Lajos always concluded by praying in Hungarian for his people, pastors, fellow prisoners, and the church. His daily plan was such a success that he often had trouble getting through his agenda before the day was done.
But in contrast to his spiritual tranquility, events on the outside took a turn for the worse. In mid-April the guards gleefully informed Lajos that the church had, after all, removed him from office. Again, it was a long time before he learned the whole story: how pastors were being arrested and sent to work camps, how church council members were told to find Lajos guilty or else the state would initiate a new legal process against him for espionage and conspiracy—this one resulting in a much longer imprisonment, maybe execution—and other pastors would go down with him. As it was, eight of the council members abstained from the vote and only four voted in favor of conviction, but it was enough to get the job done. All Lajos knew was that his flock had turned on him.
Of course, from the state’s perspective, Lajos was no longer a danger. They commuted the last portion of his sentence and on May 30 he walked free—in a sense. But the new Hungary was a terrible place. Stalin and Rákosi were the new idols, whose images were everywhere. All private property was nationalized. All publications were censored. All mail was monitored. Pastors over sixty were forced into retirement. Dioceses were reorganized to suit the state’s convenience. Religious education was abolished and diaconal work suspended. Churches could not invite preachers or speakers without government approval. And even state officials were regularly deposed, exiled, or executed.
Lajos and his family were moved into an apartment in an old deaconess home on a third of his former pastoral salary. He and his wife were reduced to knitting sweaters and gloves, fashioning leather goods, and crafting sandals out of cornhusks to earn enough money to survive. In his spare time—of which there was plenty—Lajos returned to his old habit of translating Scandinavian theological literature. He’d already produced translations of the Danish Kaj Munk’s plays, the Swedish Bo Giertz’s devotions, and the Norwegian Johan Lunde’s children’s sermons. He also taught himself Icelandic and set about putting Hallgrímur Péturrsson’s Lenten hymns into Hungarian.
The winds of change began to blow in 1956, though they would prove to be short-lived. A spirit of openness, elbow room, freedom of thought and freedom of speech stirred the nation. Clergy were let of jail and the State Office of Church Affairs, once Lajos’s worst enemy, offered him a complete pension and rehabilitation. Lajos would accept nothing less than the overturning of the verdict against him, always still thinking of Paul and Silas in Acts 16, and so on October 5 his indictment was rescinded by the government and swiftly thereafter by the church as well. On October 14 he preached. The church building and the surrounding streets were overflowing with people eager to hear him. Before long he had more visitors than he knew what do with—cowed Christians who were relieved finally to come out of hiding.
At about the same time, Lajos preached on Matthew 24:13, “But the one who endures to the end will be saved,” his favorite Bible passage. He said:
“Now I am telling you a secret… The secret is this: Jesus endured, uniquely endured, not only while he was on this earth, but he remains true to his promise forever. And I wish to open this secret not only by pointing to the testimony of others. In this most solemn hour of your life I am, perhaps, permitted to address you with my most personal experience. Our Lord Jesus Christ gave me this biblical verse when I lived the hardest days of my life, when my personal fate turned most hopeless. And now I wish to tell you with utmost joy that my Lord Jesus Christ has always kept his promise until now. He has never let me down. And there is nothing in my soul but the firm certainty that Jesus keeps his promise until giving us the crown of salvation.”
Then, on October 23, the Hungarian revolution broke out. There were student demonstrations and strikes demanding a free and open society. Not two weeks later Soviet tanks rolled in. By November 10 the revolution was utterly crushed. Many people were dead; over two hundred thousand fled the country as refugees; countless of those who stayed behind were tried and imprisoned.
For a short while the new explicitly Soviet power structure pretended to allow for ongoing freedoms. Lajos was allowed to travel to the United States in 1957 to attend the Lutheran World Federation assembly in Minneapolis.
But new waves of terror were breaking out back home; history was repeating itself with a vengeance. Still more pastors were arrested and sent to labor camps. The government declared its right to confirm all elected church leaders and made the law retroactively valid to October 1 of the year before—in other words, to right before the revolution. Over the next year and a half, all Lutheran church leaders were removed from office on the basis of this law, and the church’s own laws were simply suspended, a state of affairs that remained in effect until the end of communism in 1989.
Knowing full well the danger he was placing himself in, Lajos wrote a long letter to the authorities in the fall of 1957, naming and challenging their abuses of power. A meeting with them several weeks later only exacerbated the alienation. The state demanded the church’s loyalty. Lajos demanded the church’s right to be the church. The conflict continued until June of the next year, when the state reinstated the collaborator bishop who’d been in office during Lajos’s imprisonment. He held office for all of two hours before resigning, leaving the state free, by its own lights, to name a replacement who was most certainly not Lajos. One single candidate was put forward and he was, of course, elected. From then on, all of the church’s decisions were made by the state, and Lajos was out of work and out of office. He remained so for twenty more years, until his death, and this time with no reprieve or end in sight.
Lajos remained under constant surveillance all his remaining days. Few even of his supporters dared to visit him anymore—the threat of punishment was all too real—though his loyal friends outside the country continued to lobby for justice, but to no avail. He was inundated with greetings from all over the world on his seventy-fifth birthday. He kept writing his own works and translating those of others. But there was no vindication for his fidelity in his lifetime. By and large it remained a secret, an invisible faithfulness whose only witness was God.
Lajos Ordass died on August 14, 1978, with his Icelandic Bible open to Ephesians 4:1, the same text for his ordination fifty-four years earlier: “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.”
After communism ended, Lajos’s wife Irén petitioned the church to reverse its 1958 condemnation of her husband. Though she didn’t live to see it done, on October 5, 1995, a church court declared that Lajos had been “the legal bishop of the southern diocese until his death on August 14, 1978.” All in all, he’d only been able to exercise that office for a total of seven years. For most of his life his confession of Christ was silenced. But his faith endured to the end.
For Further Reading
Tibor Fabiny, The Veil of God: The Testimony of Bishop Lajos Ordass in Communist Hungary (Budapest: Center for Hermeneutical Research, 2008).
László G. Terray, He Could Not Do Otherwise: BIshop Lajos Ordass, 1901–1978, trans. Eric W. Gritsch (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997).