Book ReviewNews from EuropeNews from Hungary

Budapest Report on Christian Persecution: General theoretical reflections on the state of the security of Christians

Budapest report on Christian persecution

Miklós Szánthó's paper is written about the Ideological persecution of Christianity in Europe in the Budapest Report on Christian Persecution.

The paper begins with the concept of ‘War without Weapons,’ where the author points out that concurring without outright abuse can be possible if the victim’ ideas are deconstructed with social sensibility and reasoning. In this case, the Christian paradigm, the cornerstone of the trans-Atlantic culture, is in the cross-hairs. In Eastern Europe, society is much more sensitive towards these techniques, while in western Europe, society was imbued in schools, media, and pop culture; therefore, society’s fabric was slowly deteriorating because of the demoralising mechanism.

Demoralisation attacked traditions and language that mainly came from Christianity. Without the cohesive communities of religion, nation, family,  ridding the individual even from its gender, the individual – without the protection of these communities – is defenceless against demoralising mechanism.

The most important identity of an individual and a community is their relation to the transcendent, so ridding the individual from religion through the enlightenment and communism, is a subtle way of attacking the most crucial pillar of the culture.

The enlightenment’s main idea – says the author – was to destroy the Church because the idea of the almighty God contradicted the egoism of the individual. In a few years, the Church was destroyed in France both physically and morally. The individual – forging his own faith – turned his back on his religious faith, with morals remaining, only as a memento. Marx inherited this world, and with the idea that man creates religion, and not the other way around, produced other deconstructions, such as the deconstruction of the family, gender etc.  The Frankfurt school in 1968 concluded that the socialist revolution is still pending in the West because the individuals are still “trapped” by beliefs like family and Christianity. So rather than approaching from the side of the economy, they approached their dilemma ideologically with the guidance of the “Three M” (Marx, Mao, Marcuse), to destroy their reality, the total deconstruction of reality in the name of the “revolution that frees everyone”.

Rather than relying on terror, they approached the individual who in time would throw away values like homeland, family and their faith in God.

In the chapter, ‘Christian Persecution in the name of Political Correctness,’ the author pointed out that without any objective barriers (borders, responsibilities and limits), the reality of the individual no longer exists. This leaves them only with desires and theories. With fundamental rights being rationalised, without granting any Christian natural ground to them, the laws are codifications of the desires of the individual. A great example of that is the case in Italy back in 2009, where the opponent attacked the Italian State, saying: The crosses in school buildings are prohibiting the parents to raise their children in their own way; hence they should be removed. The opponents lost the case, but a number of other cases followed, and there are numbers of cases against the states that they should remain secularised. In the meantime, rainbow flags are popping out here and there in the name of tolerance.
No matter which case we are talking about, usually they are against the teachings of the Bible. They have removed Christian ideas from human rights, falsely claiming that human dignity and human life come from the French Revolution rather than Christian morals.

The author raises the question: what can we, Christians, expect from a world that rejects its own identity? The demoralisation was a success in the West, and now gender identity is on the table. The only way to respond to this moral mire is to return to the Christian values.

Leave a reply