ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that, for the greater part of the 20th century, Freethought and atheism were of limited significance in Hungary and remain rare today as ideologies of conviction. In the Age of Dualism, the principles of atheism and Freethought were primarily manifested in demands for educational freedom and, at the same time, in the dissemination of materialist-evolutionist views. Agitation for atheism or nondenominationalism, however, was rare. After the First World War, the legacy of freethinking and the Marxist “counterculture” of dualism were the atheism of a radical antireligious system. Between the wars, in the “Christian course”, radical liberal, Marxist and Communist groups retained their freethinking or atheist views but had, at most, limited opportunities to create influential organizations. After 1945, the Communist dictatorship had atheism as an integral part of its system: until 1956, this took the form of a hard-line political atheism, but after the early 1960s, practical political atheism became more differentiated. The objective of the ideological reeducation of society, however, was only partly attained. After 1990, the proportion of express atheists in the one third of the Hungarian population that is nonreligious is relatively low. Consequently, apart from a narrow circle of people propagating atheist views in Hungary, there is only unreflecting, practical, passive “consumer atheism”.
