1st–10th century

Temple of Isis in Szombathely. Rebuilt in 2011 on the site of the ruins of Roman Pannonian temple of the mysteries of Isis.

In antiquity, the lands of the Carpathian Basin covered by the contemporary state of Hungary were inhabited by sedentary tribes of Celts and Illyrians (the Pannonians) in the parts west of the river Danube — the region of Transdanubia —, and by nomadic tribes of Scytho-Siberians (the Iazyges) in the parts east of the Danube — the Great Plain —, with varying degrees of relations with each others.^[3] In the early years of the 1st century, the Celto-Illyrian western lands were incorporated into the region of Pannonia in the Roman Empire; the Roman military conquest of the region had already begun under Augustus, who in 12–9 BCE had pushed the Roman frontier to the riverbanks of the Danube, and by the year 20 CE the permanent military camp of Aquincum, located within the area which today is the city of Budapest, had been founded.^[4] The Celto-Illyrian people, among whom Celtic culture had become dominant, were partially Romanised under the Roman Empire; this was especially true for their upper classes, while the population as a whole preserved the original Celtic culture for long time even under Romanisation.^[4] Religiously, the Roman authorities built temples of the official Roman religion of the state, to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, but also Romano-Celtic temples which continued the cults of the pre-Roman Celtic religion.^[5] Mystery religions, focused on individual otherworldly salvation, originating from the southeastern provinces of the Roman Empire, also spread to Pannonia, including Greco-Roman-Iranian Mithraism, Greco-Roman-Egyptian Isis-Anubis-Serapis' mysteries, Greco-Roman-Semitic Judaism, and also Christianity from the 2nd century, and various places of worship of these faiths were built as well.^[5]

Roman Pannonia was periodically under attack by its eastern nomadic Scythian neighbours of the Great Plain, whom throughout the 2nd and 3rd century were joined by many Germanic nomads,^[6] and at the turn between the 4th and the 5th century by the Huns, a multiethnic confederation of nomadic tribes whose original core can probably be identified as the Xiongnu of the Chinese sources, who came from Inner Mongolia and the Gobi Desert and against whom the Chinese built the Great Wall, but by that time, and especially under their king Attila (c. 406–453), had absorbed many Germanic tribes, especially Goths.^[7] In 409, and then in 433 by general Flavius Aetius, the Romans yielded the lands of Pannonia to the Huns, who made them their central settlement; this marked the beginning of an ethnic transformation of the population of the region: as the Roman power waned, the local Celto-Romans, although their population shrank significantly, were not completely displaced by the newcomers, who culturally and linguistically absorbed them.^[8] Little is known about the religion of the Huns, apart that a winged griffin may have been their totemic animal-ancestor.^[9] Between the 6th and the 8th century, the regions of Pannonia and the Great Plain were dominated first by the Germanic Gepids and then by the Avars, a multiethnic alliance of nomadic tribes akin to the Huns, who brought other totemisms and the theme of the many-layered world tree which reaches the utmost sky, which together with earlier Hunnic beliefs would have continued in the beliefs of the later Hungarians; the regions were also settled by significant communities of Slavs.^[10] In 803, the Frankish emperor Charlemagne defeated the Avar rulers, and Pannonia became part of the officially Christian polity of the Carolingian Empire of the Franks, as the March of Pannonia, for the whole 9th century, while the Great Plain fell under the sphere of influence of the First Bulgarian Empire.^[11] According to some historical accounts, some Avar governors converted to Christianity once they were defeated by the Franks, but there is no trace of Christian elements in the large Avar cemeteries of the epoch.^[11]

By the end of the 9th century, a federation of Finno-Ugric-speaking people, the Magyar tribes, began to settle in the Great Plain and Pannonia led by the holy sovereign Árpád (895–c. 907), starting the ethnogenesis of the modern Hungarians.^[12] The original Pagan religion of the Magyars-Hungarians has been reconstructed as animistic and shamanic by scholars, and it has been hypothesised that it was similar to Siberian shamanism-Tengrism, on the basis of analogies, linguistic evidence, modern folklore and archaeological data.^[13] Early scholarship compared it to Sumerian and Scythian religions.^[14] The conception of a supreme God, akin to the pan-Siberian Tengri (meaning "Heaven" or "God" in Turkic), has also been hypothesised.^[15] Some scholars, however, have disputed the identification of the Magyar-Hungarian shaman-like magicians, the táltoses, as shamans in the typical Siberian sense, and have found no clear evidence of shamanic rituals.^[16] Islamic historians of that period described the religion of the Magyar-Hungarians as based on astrotheology and the worship of natural forces and fire.^[17] Based on later prohibitions from Christian regulations, there is evidence that they practised sacrifices at holy groves and springs.^[17]

The evidence that Christianity was practised among the Hungarians before the 950s is weak.^[18] The question of the continuity of Christianity in the region since Roman times is unresolved; Christian places of worship that were built in the 3rd and 4th century in Transdanubia, the former Roman province of Pannonia, and under Carolingian rule in the 9th century, would have been rebuilt and reused by the Hungarians only in the 11th century.^[19] Some Christian communities of the pre-Hungarian populations of the regions, however, likely persisted under the newcomers, and Christian slaves, as well as trade with neighbouring Christianised Slavic and Germanic lands, probably made the Hungarians acquainted with Christianity.^[20] The first attested Hungarian converts to Christianity were the chieftains Bulcsú and Gyula, who adopted Eastern Christianity in the mid-10th century, followed by other local lords.^[21]

11th–16th century

Equestrian statue of King Stephen I, in Budapest.

Medieval Hungarian chronicles incorporated many Pagan myths, and transmitted them into the folklore; these include the myth of the brothers Hunor and Magor led by a divine stag to new lands, and the myth of the divine origins of the House of Árpád — the dynasty to which all the great princes of the Magyar tribes and later kings of Hungary from the 9th to the early 14th century belonged —, according to which the Árpád's forefather Ügyek was born from the union of a mortal woman, Emese, with the Turul, a divine bird of the Hungarian indigenous religion.^[22] The presence of various Turkic tribal groups in medieval Hungary, such as the Pechenegs and Kipchaks, further contributed to the religious landscape of the region. The religious practices of these Turkic communities were diverse, with Islam and Tengrism being prominent amongst the Pechenegs.^[23]

Hungary emerged to statehood at the turn between the 1st and the 2nd millennium, when the federation of the Magyar tribes was reformed into the Kingdom of Hungary, and Western Christianity, specifically Roman Catholicism, was chosen as the state religion.^[24] Although the Kingdom of Hungary was undoubtedly shapen by Western Christianity, minorities of Eastern Christianity, specifically Eastern Orthodox Christianity, continued to be present throughout the nation's history.^[24] Stephen I (c. 975–1038), the first sovereign who assumed the title of King of Hungary, adopted Catholicism and laid the foundations of the Catholic Church among the Hungarian people by establishing ten dioceses.^[24] Stephen started a program of Christianisation of his subjects, which at first met the resistance of Pagans and took place at least in part through coercion, through a system of legislative prohibitions of Paganism, Christianising regulations, and penalties for their violations.^[25] Within the 12th century, Paganism had been more or less eradicated and was portrayed in a dark light in historical records, although, in the late 13th century, ancient myths were reclaimed to give the ruling dynasty and the people glorious origins.^[26] Thenceforth, the principle of "patronate" of the state towards religions, or earlier royal care of spiritual matters, remained firm up throughout the 20th century.^[24]

A deep change in the country's religious composition took place during the 16th century, when Protestantism was quickly adopted by a majority of the Hungarians, especially in the forms at first of Lutheranism from Germany and shortly afterwards of Calvinism (Reformed Christianity) from Switzerland.^[24] The Protestant Reformation began to spread into Hungary from historical Upper Hungary (which included Northern Hungary but also areas which today are in Slovakia), originally as unclear eclectic theologies brought in the 1520s and 1530s by German itinerant preachers, which in the 1540s stabilised along the lines of the doctrine of Lutheranism, with minorities professing Anabaptism.^[27] Protestantism reached Hungary when the Catholic kingdom was in struggle with the Islamic Ottoman Empire and the central power was weak,^[24] since the Hungarian throne was contended between Ferdinand I of the Austrian House of Habsburg, the house which also held the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Hungarian aristocrat John Zápolya (1487–1540).^[28] In 1526, after the Battle of Mohács, large portions of southern and eastern Hungary, including Southern Transdanubia and the whole Great Plain, were incorporated into the Ottoman Empire.^[29] At the same time, the Hungarians of Transylvania further east, who had not fallen under the domains of either the Kingdom of Hungary or the Ottoman Empire, came under the rule of John Zápolya, who proclaimed himself the legitimate king, while the throne of the western main kingdom was claimed by Ferdinand I; while, at first, the latter tolerated Lutherans, Zápolya presented himself as a preserver of Catholicism.^[28] Transylvanian Hungarians were, however, the first among whom Calvinism and Unitarianism (a nontrinitarian doctrine) took root — first introduced among local Transylvanian Saxons — and, given that Lutheranism became increasingly associated with ethnic Germans throughout all the Hungarian lands, Calvinism became the most successful Protestant doctrine among ethnic Hungarians, first in Transylvania, abetted by the support of the son of Jon Zápolya, King John Sigismund Zápolya (1540–1571; with whose abdication in 1570 also Transylvanian Hungarians came under the Habsburgs), himself a Unitarian convert, and soon afterwards also in Ottoman Hungary.^[30] Important Calvinist reformers were Márton Kálmáncsehi (1500–1550) and Péter Melius Juhász (1532–1572), the latter of whom made the Bible and other religious writings available in the Hungarian language and made Debrecen in the Great Plain the centre of Hungarian Calvinism, the "Hungarian Geneva" or the second "Calvinist Rome".^[31] Calvinism flourished in Ottoman Hungary, thanks to the tolerant Ottoman policies on religions, and was even supported by the Ottomans themselves against Catholicism because of its independent communal organisation and strict discipline, which were appreciated by the Ottoman administration.^[32] Calvinism also spread to the eastern parts of Upper Hungary, already penetrated by the Lutheran doctrine.^[32] Even in the western Kingdom of Hungary, where Catholicism had survived while elsewhere it had become residual, the nobility supported Lutheranism.^[32] The Hungarian Reformed Church became the symbol of national culture, since it popularised the Bible in the vernacular language and contributed to the education of the population through its school system.^[33]

17th–19th century

Matthias Church in Budapest.

While the Protestant Reformation was spreading rapidly throughout Europe, the House of Habsburg, which also held the throne of the Kingdom of Hungary, bolstered the program of Counter-Reformation devised by the Catholic Church to thwart the spread of Protestantism.^[33] In the Kingdom of Hungary, the Protestant nobility experienced some freedom in the 17th century, but its influence was soon curbed by the re-Catholicising efforts of the Habsburgs.^[33] In 1699, the Treaty of Karlowitz ended the Great Turkish War between the Holy League, of which the Holy Roman Empire of the Habsburgs was a constituent member, and the Ottoman Empire; the former won, and Ottoman Hungary was yolden to the Kingdom of Hungary, so that Hungary was reunified and the Counter-Reformation was extended to the whole country. The sway of the Habsburg state was also strong on the internal affairs of the Catholic Church, especially during the period of the enlightened absolutism of Josephinism in the 18th century — i.e. the imperial rule of Joseph II, 1765–1790 —, when, for instance, contemplative religious orders were dissolved.^[33]

The Counter-Reformation had some success, but Hungary was never entirely converted back to Catholicism and maintained a strong pluralism of religious denominations, aided by a deeply characteristic tolerant approach of the Hungarians towards religious matters, although there were some periods of conflict between Catholics and Protestants, which nonetheless begot a "fruitful tension" which enriched national and local culture.^[33] At the end of the 18th century, the Calvinist and Lutheran religions regained complete freedom to be practised, although their legal status remained far from being equal to that of the Catholic Church.^[33] The legislation issued in the period of the 1848 Revolution, which took place against the Habsburg dynasty, declared the equality of all accepted religions in Hungary, which included all the historical Christian denominations but excluded Judaism.^[33] Jews became emancipated only in 1867, and by the end of the century their number had grown to represent over 5% of the total Hungarian population, and the liberal climate of the period led to their quick assimilation into Hungarian society.^[33] According to 1890 laws, religions in Hungary were distinguished between "incorporated" ones — namely Catholicism, Calvinism, Lutheranism, Orthodox Christianity, Unitarianism and Judaism —, whose representatives held seats in the upper house of the Parliament, and "recognised" ones, which had fewer rights.^[33]

20th century

After the end of World War I and the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, national conservative forces came to dominate the political and cultural life of the Kingdom of Hungary, and they rescinded some of the liberal legislation of the foregoing period.^[33] During World War II, Hungary was occupied by Nazi German forces in March 1944, and in the following few months three-fourths of Hungarian Jewry were deported to concentration camps and killed in the Holocaust.^[33]

During the 1946–1949 Hungarian Republic, the system of "incorporated" religions of 1890 was abolished, and all religions were treated as equal on the level of the "recognised" ones.^[33] With the Communist takeover in 1948, and the establishment of the Hungarian People's Republic in 1949, religious freedom was curtailed, education was nationalised and religious schools abolished, theological faculties were separated from national universities, religious orders were banned, the properties of churches were confiscated by the state, and numerous religious leaders were arrested, including the cardinal József Mindszenty, leader of the Hungarian Catholic Church, who in 1949 was tortured and sentenced to life imprisonment.^[34] Between 1948 and 1949, the leaders of all the major churches who had not been arrested, including the Catholic Bishops' Conference, signed agreements with the government, acknowledging the emerging Communist power.^[35] The State Office of Church Affairs exercised control over all churches, and while the collaboration between the state and minor denominations was easier, within the Catholic Church such collaboration brought to a rupture in the clergy, since the government claimed the right to regulate the nomination of bishops, and even minor priests, for itself.^[35]

In the 1960s, state pressure began to relax, and in 1964 the Holy See of the Catholic Church in Rome signed an agreement with the Hungarian government to define the procedure to be followed in the appointment of bishops, the oath of the clergy on the state's constitution, and the postgraduate education of the Hungarian clergy at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in Rome; the competence of the Holy See in matters of religion was also acknowledged in the document.^[35] These stipulations were a unique development in the Communist Block, and from that year onwards representatives of the Hungarian government and of the Holy See met twice a year, once in Budapest and once in the Vatican City.^[35] In the late 1980s, the state's control over religions were loosened significantly, historical denominations experienced more freedom and new denominations were recognised.^[35] The collapse of the Communist Block in the early 1990s opened a new era of religious freedom and church–state relations in Hungary, inaugurated in 1990 by the "Act of Freedom of Conscience and Religion and the Churches".^[35]

21st century

Statue of the Turul with the Holy Crown, on Kő Hill, in Bánhida, Tatabánya. The Turul is a divine bird in old Hungarian religion and shamanism, and has become one of the main symbols of contemporary Hungarian national identity. Several statues representing it have been built across Hungary, especially after 2010.^[36]

Since the 1990s and throughout the early 21st century, Hungary has become more religiously diverse; all the major world religions, and both domestic and international new religious movements, can be found in the country nowadays — apart from historical and new denominations of Christianity and Judaism, the country has seen the rise of movements and organisations of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, the Baháʼí Faith, Taoism, Ősmagyar vallás and other Neopaganisms, and New Age.^[2] The censuses of the 1990s and of the early 21st century have recorded an overall decline of Christianity among the Hungarians — affiliation to which shrank from 92.9% of the population in 1992, to 74.4% in 2001, 54.2% in 2011, and 42.5% in 2022 —, accompanied by a rise of the unaffiliated people and people who declined to answer the census' question about religion.^[1] Adherents of new religions might be over-represented among the unanswering population,^[37] and contemporary studies on the general beliefs of the Hungarians have shown that among those who do not identify themselves as Christians, syncretism of elements from different religions and esotericism are indeed popular.^[38]

Contemporary Hungary is a secular state, where the Constitution guarantees freedom of religious belief and practice, and of irreligion, to all Hungarian citizens, as well as the neutrality of the state in matters of religion, safeguarded by a complex set of legal norms.^[39] The wording of the Hungarian Constitution on religious matters is similar to that of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, although the Constitution also acknowledges the right of citizens not to espouse any religious convictions.^[35] The acknowledged neutrality of the state towards religions implies its separation from any particular church, that the state and churches function separately, but does not entail indifference towards religions and laicism; the state can have an active role in providing an institutional legal framework and funding for churches, in order to ensure the free exercise of religion.^[24] The Constitution also affirms that religious convictions can be expressed in ways that are not contrary to laws, that citizens must not be discriminated on the basis of their religious convictions, and recognises the right of parents to determine the religious or non-religious education of their children.^[35] Statutory law guarantees the equal rights of all religious organisations and for their cooperation with the state.^[35]

In 2011–2012, the Constitution was changed, and a new "Act CCVI on the Right of Freedom of Conscience and Religion, and on the Legal Status of Churches, Religious Denominations, and Religious Communities" was implemented.^[40] The new act, which replaced that of 1990, re-introduced a two-tiered classification of religious organisations, similar to that of 1890, distinguishing between officially registered "incorporated" churches, a higher status which also entails access to various privileges such as state funding, and "organisations conducting religious activities", with fewer rights and privileges.^[40] Many churches which had been granted official registration between 1990 and 2011 lost their status once the new Act CCVI was implemented.^[40] The new legislation was subject to an intense domestic and international criticism, and to lawsuits at the European Court of Human Rights.^[40]

The preamble of the 2011–2012 Constitution remembers that "Stephen built the Hungarian State on solid ground and made our country part of Christian Europe a thousand years ago", recognises "the role of Christianity in preserving the nation" and that "the various religious traditions of [the] country" should be honoured.^[41] In 2018, an amendment was made to guarantee "the protection of the constitutional identity and Christian culture of Hungary" as "an obligation of every organ of the State".^[41] According to Balázs Schanda, judge at the Constitutional Court of Hungary, the Constitution continues to be neutral with regards to religions, and does not commit the state to the Christian religion in particular; the amendment only enshrined the protection of Hungarian culture in its historical nature, as historically characterised by Christianity.^[42] It merely recognised an historical fact, that is the role played by Christianity in the history of the Hungarian nation, and does not claim that Christianity plays an exclusive role nowadays.^[43]

Gateway at the 2019 Kurultáj with flags representing various Hungarian runes and Pagan symbols.

According to the scholar István Povedák, elements from pre-Christian Paganism and shamanism, already preserved in the folk religiosity of Hungary as well as of Central and Eastern Europe, have been revived and reinvented in forms of Neopaganism, ethnic Ősmagyar vallás, which have become integrated in various dimensions of contemporary Hungarian culture, often in syncretism with Christian elements.^[44] Before World War II, in some rural areas certain persons were still considered táltoses, i.e. indigenous Hungarian shaman-magicians, by the local communities,^[45] and around the mid-1980s a neo-táltos movement began to emerge, with links to international neoshamanism.^[46] On 15 March 2012, the National Assembly of Hungary gave a Tuvan Tengrist shaman, Ojun Adigzi See-Oglu, the permission to perform a veneration ritual and cleansing ceremony on the Holy Crown of the Hungarian kings, an object which holds both Pagan and Christian meanings, at the Hungarian Parliament Building; Ojun was assisted by Éva Kanalas, a táltos, and folk singer, who sang Csángó folk religious songs during the ritual.^[47]

The scholars Zoltán Ádám and András Bozóki identify a Pagan-Christian mixed character in the 2011–2012 Constitution, as a reflection of the eclectic reference to both Christianity and ethnic Paganism which has been a feature of the political discourse of the right-wing Fidesz party and its leader Viktor Orbán, the governing forces in the 2010s.^[48] Daniella Gáti quotes Magdalena Marsovszky saying that the renewed Constitution, despite the references to Christian culture, would be "ultimately not Christian as much as folk and Pagan".^[49] According to Ádám Kolozsi, said syncretic, "heterogeneous mixture of Christian and Pagan elements", is part of a "wider spiritual discourse of contemporary Hungarian nationalism".^[50] Such an attitude would reconcile two conflicting cultural aspects in the character of the Hungarian nation: the "Western" universal one represented by Christianity, and the "Eastern" tribal one represented by ethnic Paganism,^[51] between which the identity of the Hungarians has always swungen.^[52] According to László Kürti, such syncretism, present among the people and promoted by the governmental elite, would be coalescing into a new civil Hungarian religion with neoshamanism at its core.^[53] Another strong political party of the 21st century, Jobbik, has on the other hand been seen as representing the "essentially Pagan, anti-Christian" fringe of the right-wing.^[54] Viola Teisenhoffer noted that the Kurultáj, a major festival with a political and anthropological character holden yearly since the second half of the 2000s in Bugac, in the Southern Great Plain, is essentially connected with the Pagan revival, with many contemporary Pagan leaders and their followers taking part in the event.^[55]

Christianity

King Ladislaus I was an important figure in the country's Christianity during the Middle Ages.

The majority of Hungarians became Christian in the 11th century. Hungary's first king, Saint Stephen I, took up Western Christianity, although his mother Sarolt was baptized into Eastern Christianity. Hungary remained predominantly Catholic until the 16th century, when the Reformation took place and, as a result, first Lutheranism and then soon afterwards Calvinism became the religion of almost the entire population. Protestants composed some 85–90% of the entire population, more than a half of the Hungarian population being part of the Calvinist confessing Reformed Church and a quarter of Lutheran confessing Evangelical Church.^[56]

In the second half of the 16th century, however, the Catholic Habsburg Kings and Jesuits led a successful campaign of Counter-Reformation among the Hungarians. The Jesuits founded educational institutions, including Péter Pázmány Catholic University, the oldest university that still exists in Hungary, and also organized missions in order to promote popular piety.

Using both political and apologetic efforts, most of the High Nobility composing the Diet was already predominantly Catholic by the 1640s, a process consolidated as the new reconquered estates were granted to the converted aristocracy, who supported in Counter-Reformation. Despite this, the lower nobility, the town burghers and the common people still retained a largely Protestant – especially Calvinist – identity, opposing the catholic German-likeness of the Habsburg courtly politics. Allied with the Constitutional Rights enforced by the Nobility and the military pressure of the Protestant Principality of Transylvania on the eastern border, the Catholic Counter-Reformation achieved partial results compared to the other Habsburg-controlled possessions, like Bohemia and Austria, where Catholicism was restored to the status of the sole religion of the realm.

Some of the eastern parts of the country, especially around Debrecen (nicknamed "the Calvinist Rome"), still have significant Protestant communities. The Reformed Church in Hungary is the second-largest church in Hungary with 1,153,442 adherents as of 2011.^[1] The church has 1,249 congregations, 27 presbyteries, and 1,550 ministers. The Reformed Church supports 129 educational institutions and has 4 theological seminaries, located in Debrecen, Sárospatak, Pápa, and Budapest.^[57]

Lutheranism is the third main historical Christian denomination in Hungary. It was introduced by Saxon settlers in the early 16th century, but after its brief efflorescence, the introduction of the Reformed Church and the Counter-Reformation made it almost non-existent amongst Hungarians up to the late 17th century. Later it was re-introduced through inward migration by Saxons and Slovaks. Today, the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Hungary is a small minority in Hungary. Despite its relatively small number of adherents, it had a strong power and influence in internal politics since Hungary's independence from the strongly Catholic Habsburg Empire.

The proportion of Protestantism in Hungary has decreased from around 27% in the early 20th century to about 16% in the early 21st century.^[1] Eastern Orthodoxy in Hungary has been the religion mainly of certain national minorities in the country, notably Romanians, Rusyns, Ukrainians, and Serbs. Hungary has also been the home of a sizable Armenian Catholic community. They worship according to the Armenian Rite, but they have united with the Catholic Church under the primacy of the Pope. Some of the Armenians in Hungary are adherents of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was legally recognized in Hungary in June 1988 and its first meetinghouse in the country was dedicated in October of the following year by President Thomas S. Monson. In June 1990, the Hungary Budapest Mission was created, followed by the first stake in June 2006. The mission, its districts, and the Budapest Hungary Stake together contain twenty-two wards and branches serving approximately 5000 members.^[58]

Judaism

The former synagogue of the Hungarian city of Sopron.

Historically, Hungary was home to a significant Jewish community. In the 19th century, the pressures of Jewish emancipation, acculturation and secularization led growing tension between modernists and traditionalists. These culminated in 1871, when a communal schism between the Neologs, roughly equivalent to American Conservative Judaism, and Orthodox, divided Hungarian Jews. The census of January 1941 found that 4.3% of the population, or around 400,000 people, were considered of the Jewish religion (not including Christians of Jewish descent or converts to Christianity, who were registered as Jews by race under the new Anti-Jewish laws). In 2011, only 10,965 Jews (0.1% of the population) remained.^[1] Some Hungarian Jews were able to escape the Holocaust during World War II, but most (perhaps 550,000)^[59] either were deported to concentration camps, from which the majority did not return, or were murdered by the Arrow Cross fascists. Most Jewish people who remain in Hungary live in the centre of Budapest, especially in district VII. The largest synagogue in Europe, the Dohány Street Synagogue, is located in Budapest.^[60]

Islam

Mosque in Siklós.

The influence of Muslims in Hungary was especially pronounced in the 16th century during the time of the Ottoman rule. According to the 2011 census, there were 5,579 Muslims in Hungary, less than 0.1% of the total population.^[1] Of these, 4,097 declared themselves as Hungarian and 2,369 as Arab by ethnicity.^[61]

Buddhism

In recent decades Buddhism has spread to Hungary, primarily in its Vajrayana forms through the activity of Tibetan missionary monks. Since in Hungary religions are encouraged to institutionalise into church (egyház) bodies in order to be recognised by the government, various institutions have formed, including the Hungarian Buddhist Church (Magyarországi Buddhista Egyházközösség),^[62] the Gate of Dharma Buddhist Church (A Tan Kapuja Buddhista Egyház),^[63] and others, mostly Vajrayana. A Shaolin temple, the Hungarian Shaolin Temple, was founded in Budapest in 1994.

"Navayana" Buddhism or Ambedkarite Buddhism, a recent Buddhist denomination emerged among the Dalits of India, a form of Buddhism socially and politically engaged for the betterment of the conditions of marginalised peoples, has been spread also to the Romani ethnic minority of Hungary.^[64]

Paganism

A világfa (world tree) erected in Gödöllő, Pest, Budapest metropolis.

Hungary has seen the rise of a varied movement of Neopagan religions (Hungarian: Újpogányság), the major ones being Ősmagyar vallás, meaning "Old Hungarian Religion" — defined as "Hungarian Native Faith" by scholars as it comprises those movements which are or claim to be based on the indigenous spirituality of the Hungarian ethnicity —, and non-native religions including Egyptian Kemetism, Celtic Druidry, Wicca, and Mithraism.^[65]

Ősmagyar vallás is itself a composite and heterogeneous movement comprising diverse currents and organisations, which often both intertwine and conflict with each other; the scholar Ádám Kolozsi identified three of them:^[66] a Sumerian Zuism-oriented current, whose main ideologist has been the Assyriologist Ferenc Badinyi-Jós;^[67] a current of Scythian-Hunnic Tengrism-oriented national esotericism revolving around the Holy Crown of Hungary and an eschatological interpretation of Hungarian history — opened by the first shaman-king Attila, passing through the conflict between Cupan (Pagan) and Stephen (Christian), and closed by the future shaman-king Matthias —, whose main ideologists have been Gábor Pap and Jajos Szántai and which syncretises the Christian heritage in its spiritual project;^[68] and a Uralic-Siberian Tengrism-oriented current, sometimes called Böőn, whose main ideologist has been Imre Maté.^[69]

The heterogeneity of Ősmagyar vallás is due to the fact that little is known about the pre-Christian Hungarian religion, apart that it was led by shaman-like magicians, called táltoses, and it has been hypothesised that it was akin to Siberian shamanism-Tengrism, and in earlier studies to Sumerian and Scythian religions.^[70] Apart from taltosism (táltosság), which is a common denominator of the various streams of Ősmagyar vallás, supported by the experiences and the work of various táltoses, strengthened since the 1980s by studies on the subject by Mihály Hoppál, who also invited Michael Harner and introduced core shamanism to Hungary, other sources that have contributed to the development of the movement have been the legacy of Hungarian Turanism, which arose between the two 20th-century World Wars and ascribed the ancient Sumerians, Scythians, and Huns, seen as ancestors of the Hungarians, to the same "Turanian macro-ethnicity", i.e. Uralo-Altaic, Uralic or Finno-Ugric-speaking peoples, and the spread of various forms of esotericism and New Age in the last decades of the Communist Block and in the 1990s.^[71] According to the scholars István Povedák and László A. Hubbes, the Sumerian current has been the dominant one, and has inspired a strong wave of religiousness,^[72] in which, for instance, Hungarian runes and symbols are interpreted as deriving from Sumerian cuneiform,^[73] the Turul of Hungarian mythology is interpreted as the same as the Sumerian Anzû,^[74] and the Hungarian term Isten ("God") is equated with the Akkadian Isten ("One"), the Siberian Tengri with the Sumerian Dingir–An (Akkadian Ilu).^[75]

Among Ősmagyar vallás organisations, the Hungarian Religious Fellowship (Magyar Vallás Közössége) and the Old Hungarian Church (Ősmagyar Egyház)^[76] belong to the Sumerian Zuist current; the Church of Esoteric Teachings – Church of the Holy Crown (Ezoterikus Tanok Egyháza – Szent Korona Egyház) and the Church of the Hun Universe – Holy Mother Church of the Huns (Hun Univerzum Egyháza – Hunok Anyaszentegyháza)^[77] belong to the Scythian-Hunnic Tengrist national esoteric current of the Holy Crown; the Traditional Church of the Legal Grounds of the Order of Árpád (Árpád Rendjének Jogalapja Tradicionális Egyház)^[78] belongs to a Hunnic Tengrist current which, however, fully rejects Christianity; while the Old Hungarian Taltos Church (Ősmagyar Táltos Egyház) and the Yotengrit Church of the Ancestral Spirit of the Endless Sea (Yotengrit Tengervégtelen Ős-szellem Egyháza)^[79] belong to the Uralic-Siberian Tengrist current and emerged directly from the grassroots táltos movement.^[80] The Tengri Fellowship (Tengri Közösség)^[81] is another Tengrist organisation in Hungary. Some of these churches cultivate connections with the Traditionalist School and the Nouvelle Droite of Alain de Benoist, which promotes a Europe-wide return to indigenous Paganism.^[82]

Among non-native Neopaganisms, the Ankh Church of Eternal Life (Ankh Örök Élet Egyháza)^[83] and the Sun Religion (Napvallás)^[84] are Kemetic organisations in the country, while the Sodalitas Mithraica Confessing Church (Sodalitas Mithraica Hitvalló Egyház) is an organisation of Mithraism.^[85] Wicca, a religion of English origin, is represented in Hungary by the Church of Celtic-Wiccan Tradition Keepers (Kelta-Wicca Hagyományőrzők Egyháza);^[86][87] Zsuzsanna Budapest, a Hungarian who emigrated to the United States, is the founder of the Wiccan denomination known as Dianic Wicca, popular in North America. The Association of Hungarian Witches (Magyar Boszorkányszövetség) is an organisation of Hungarian contemporary witchcraft.^[88]

Other religions

Census statistics, 1920–2022

Line chart of the trends, 1920–2022

Census statistics 1920–2022:^[1]

Religion by administrative division

Distribution of religions and irreligion in Hungary, 2011 census.

Religion by age group

Religion by education group

Typology of belief

In 2020, the outcomes of a large-sampled (53,061 people) and in depth survey on the religiousness, or beliefs, of the Hungarians were published by the Századvég Foundation in the sociological studies book Vallásosság Magyarországon.^[38] The outcomes of the survey shew that while traditional Christian religiousness is witnessing an "observable disavowal" in Hungarian society, the latter may not be considered averse to belief, and large segments of the population held syncretic or "patchwork" beliefs, i.e. mixtures of theorems from various religious traditions, or esoteric beliefs, i.e. beliefs based on theorems such as reincarnation and astrology, rather than being sheer non-believers.^[38] Specifically, 42.1% of the Hungarians were Christians, of whom 27% were fully devout Christians, i.e. fully believing in the theorems of Christian theology, and 15.1% were partially devout Christians, i.e. only believing in some theorems of Christian theology; at the same time, 27.9% of the Hungarians were syncretists, 5.3% were esotericists, and 24.7% were sheer non-believers.^[38]

Registers of government-recognised churches

Voluntary tax offering to churches

Hungarian citizens are entitled to voluntarily donate 1% of their yearly income tax to officially registered religious organisations (churches) of their choice; in 2023, donations were distributed as follows.^[95]

Citations

Sources

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