Learning from Bishop Ordass

By H. David Baer on February 25, 2015 • ( 0 )

Here’s an essay I wrote for Principium about political lessons to be learned from Lajos Ordass, the Hungarian confessor bishop.

Bishop Ordass / Lutheran Church in Hungary webpage

The Nature of Christian Political Action: Lessons from the Witness of Bishop Ordass

“For Christians, to find the right form political action represents an on-going challenge. They must avoid, on the one hand, the danger of absolutizing relative political claims, and, on the other hand, the danger of growing indifferent to politics. No single solution to the dilemma exists; rather Christians must continually search out solutions best suited to their time and place. In doing this, they will certainly attend to the character of the societies in which they live; but they will also look to great confessors from the past, persons who with their lives modeled faithful Christian engagement with politics. In this regard, Hungarians are fortunate to have had such a confessor in their recent past, Bishop Lajos Ordass. Bishop Ordass was guided in his public actions by the ideal of fidelity, and his great fidelity teaches us about the nature of authentic Christian political witness.” Full essay here