Civil Religion in Hungary

In my thesis I intend to write about the Hungarian civil religion. My aim is to reveal what historical events or characters shaped or have been shaping the Hungarian national identity since the mid-19th Century. I intend to answer the question of “What does Hungarian mean?” In his book, titled Imagined History, András Gerı says that “THE nation is THE identity.”7 According to his theory identity could be interpreted in many ways like it could be strongly bound to language, to origin, to people or to religion. The Hungarian civil religion came into existence at the beginning of the 19th Century, and it became the emotional reality of the public after the Revolution of 1848/49. During the 20th Century the Hungarian national identity was challenged by the World Wars and Communism, all of which brought political measures that questioned the “Hungarianness” of people. The Revolution of 1956 tried to put an end to this divided view of “who is and who is not a Hungarian”, and regain the independence of the country by going against the oppressive forces of the Soviets.egyetemiangol nyelv és irodalo