back on the Marxist era as a time of compromises, betrayals and unfaithfulness. Even today, many Communist-imposed bishops are still in position. But at a grass-roots level, the picture was different. Christians played a key part in the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Young Catholics organised resistance to military service, and more recently, other young Christians from the Protestant Reformed tradition were actively involved in the new parties which contested Hungary's first free elections on March 25th, 1990. A small Christian Democratic Party also gained twenty-one seats (5.4 per cent of the votes cast) and one of their number now sits in the Cabinet of the Coalition Government. One of the leading Christian voices in Hungary is pastor Geza Nemeth, who works in Budapest. He told the Ampleforth Conference that Communism was only one of the demons which had been stalking the region. Burgeoning nationalism would become a new and dangerous challenge. Pastor Nemeth says that 'after decades of imposed atheist uniformity' it is not surprising that there is a revival of national awareness but he warns that a quite proper rediscovery of values easily turns itself into aggression and intolerance. He says: 'The churches, with their responsibility for peace in Eastern Europe, must underline that Christianity is a common heritage of all Eastern European peoples; the essence of the Christian message is to bind, not to part, and it cannot, under any circumstances be an ideology of antagonism.' The danger for Hungary - and especially Hungarians in Romania's Transylvania is that rising tensions will lead to vindictive attacks. The whole region could become a Ngorno Karabakh, the Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan which has become a by-word for communal violence and nationalism. Thus, solidarity with minorities must be an essential part of the West's response to this challenge. Nemeth puts it in Christian terms by referring to the teaching of Jesus to care for 'the little ones'. From his Hungarian vantage point he says the West can help the East by using its spiritual, political and financial capacity to redress the imbalance which the region's minorities suffer. It would therefore support the Turks in Bulgaria, the Protestants and Catholics in the Baltic threatened with Russification, the Protestants in Poland, the Uniates in the Ukraine and Romania, the Hungarian Reformed Church and Catholics in Romania, Czechoslovakia, Sub-Carpathian Ukraine, and so on.
Germany: The Walls Came Tumbling Down
From the 1970s onwards East German Christians from the Reformed Churches became increasingly critical of the State. During 1989 it was they who offered a platform and a sanctuary for dissidents - with the church of Nikolaikirche in