The Conversion of Language

Abstract

The study examines the problem of ecclesial communication and linguistic renewal in the current context of the Reformed Church in Hungary. Using a historical-theological method, the study analyzes the roots of linguistic deformation, with particular attention to the period of communist dictatorship. It demonstrates how the Church leadership of the 1950s employed the “prophetic hermeneutics of contemporaneity” to provide theological legitimation for political power. Through the example of the dissolution of the Bethania Association and the reinterpretation of the concept of “Bethanism,” it documents how the revival movement came to be stigmatized as an internal enemy, alongside the infiltration of political terminology – such as “sectarian” and “reactionary” – into ecclesiastical language. 
The author argues that, owing to the failure to come to terms with the past, these linguistic and theological structures remain present in the Church today. The study concludes that genuine ecclesial renewal is impossible without linguistic renewal (metanoia). Repentance requires more than a change of personnel: it also calls for the deconstruction and reconstruction of the frameworks that shape reality, as well as the clarification of theological concepts through honest communal reflection, repentance, and acts of conversion.