WASHINGTON — A senior Hungarian government official is touting his country’s efforts to “implement the social teachings of the Bible” in his country as he travels to the United States to discuss the country’s efforts to combat religious persecution abroad.
Tristan Azbej, Hungary’s secretary of state for aid to persecuted Christians and the Hungarian aid program, appeared Monday at a dinner inaugurating the fourth annual International Summit on Religious Freedom.
The dinner was co-hosted by the Hungarian Embassy. In an interview with The Christian Post on Tuesday, Azbej spoke about the importance of religious freedom in Hungary and how helping victims of religious persecution has become part of the country’s “national code.”
“It was a great honor to be asked to host the opening reception,” he said. “I also dare to assume that it is also a sign of recognition of what Hungary is doing for persecuted Christians and other vulnerable communities around the world through our aid program, the Relief Assistance Program. Hungary.”
The Hungary Aid program was established in 2017 as “the first-ever government department dedicated to serving persecuted Christians.” The department he leads today was created in response to the fact that there are “more than 360 million people worldwide who suffer from discrimination, persecution (and) terrorist attacks due to their faith in Christ.
“Since we launched the Hungary Helps program, we have engaged in 330 faith-based humanitarian projects around the world in more than 50 countries and reached approximately 2 million people who are… members of vulnerable religious communities,” Azbej added. “We started working with Christians, but supporting Christians would not be Christian at all.”
Azbej said the Hungary Aid program also provided aid to Yazidis persecuted in Iraq, Rohingya Muslims who fled Myanmar and Jews in Yemen. He cited the humanitarian effort as proof that “a government can engage directly with the persecuted Church with faith-based actors,” describing “Christians and other faith-based entities” as “the most trustworthy humanitarian partners and closest to the most vulnerable. communities.”
“Unfortunately, most Western governments are reluctant to such direct engagement,” he lamented. “They claim that working with religious communities goes against the principles of impartiality of humanitarian aid. We believe that this is a total misunderstanding of humanitarian principles. And on the contrary, we believe that working with these faith-based organizations (is) the only way to reach the most vulnerable…and the communities left behind.”
The Hungary Aid program has established a “scholarship program over the years to enable Christians from conflict zones belonging to vulnerable religious communities to come to Hungary and study at Hungarian universities.” The scholarship program awards 100 scholarships per year to enable young Christians living in areas of the world hostile to Christianity to receive “a higher education degree with the goal of returning to their home community.”
Azbej sees the scholarship program as a way to “educate the leaders of new generations of these communities to support their long-term future and their…future in their ancestral lands.”
While the Hungarian aid program started as a project run exclusively by the Hungarian government, Azbej told CP that “many private companies joined our efforts” and “donated to persecuted Christians.” . According to Azbej, “Hungarian churches, civil society (and) even municipalities have joined our program.”
Azbej called Hungary Helps’ “mission to support persecuted Christians and others” as “not only a government program” but also “a national vocation for us Hungarians.” The Hungarian official identified the Hungary Helps program as one of many examples of how the country “tries to implement and represent the social teachings of the Bible.”
“In this framework, we support and protect the family and life,” he said. “This can be seen in the very unique and very strong family policy of the Hungarian government.”
Azbej insisted that even though the “Hungarian government is pro-life,” the country seeks to “implement this idea not through restrictive measures but through (a) very strong measures.” family support policy“.
A policy adopted in Hungary allows women to benefit from a lifetime exemption from their income tax once they have given birth to four children.
“Our goal is that no financial burden prevents Hungarian families from having children, and another pro-life policy we have is that all the different and broad family allowances are distributed and granted not at the birth of the child but from conception, during pregnancy”, he maintained.
Azbej says policies implemented by the Hungarian government have already yielded positive results, including increasing the fertility rate from 1.2 children per woman to 1.6 children per woman. While the Hungarian government remains below its fertility rate target of 2.0 children per woman, Azbej sees other promising developments in the country as a direct result of the Hungarian government’s “very strong family policies.”
Expressing gratitude to “Hungarian families who choose to have their babies and keep them,” Azbej said there has been a 30 percent drop in abortions and a 50 percent increase in marriages that materialized as a result. to the adoption of new policies. Other “Judeo-Christian and Christian-inspired policies” in Hungary include the amendment of the country’s constitution clarify that marriage is the union of a man and a woman and define the family as consisting of a husband, wife and children.
Acknowledging that Hungarian policies have “infuriated the LGBTQ lobby and therefore criticize us,” Azbej nonetheless defended them: “For us, results such as increased births and increased marriage are an encouragement to us to face all this criticism” and stay by their side.
Azbej cited the story as the reason Hungary adopted the fight against persecution of Christians and other religious minorities as its “national code.” He recalled how “not so long ago, in the 20th century, Hungary and Hungarians experienced anti-religious oppression from two totalitarian regimes: the Nazis who tragically murdered 600,000 Jews in Hungary with the collaboration of the State at the time then 40 years later. of communist oppression” which “treated religious citizens as second-class citizens.”
“There is therefore a national code for Hungary to defend those who are persecuted because of their faith,” he concluded. “The Hungarian Constitution recognizes Christianity as…the key factor that contributed…to the preservation of the Hungarian nation for 1,000 years…and it recognizes Christianity in many areas. This Hungarian Constitution was adopted in 2011 to replace the illegitimate Communist National Constitution, and it clearly references the importance of Christianity in Hungarian history.
Azbej emphasized that although Christian influence is great in Hungary, the country still hopes to serve as a beacon of religious freedom: “The most important Christian biblical value that we represent is human dignity which comes from the religious idea according to which man was created by God in the likeness of God. »
“Part of that human dignity is human freedom, so even though we recognize Christianity at a very high level, it is also enshrined in the Constitution that we value, and we protect the religious freedom of all people, regardless of faith or the conviction of each one.”
Ryan Foley is a journalist at the Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
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