This article was originally published in Vol. 5 No. 1 of our print edition.
A Theological Analysis of Hungary’s Pro-Family Policies
Introduction
Birth rates are declining in many countries around the world. The most infamous example is South Korea, where birth rates have fallen to 0.7 per woman (the replacement birth rate is 2.1).1 If current trends continue, forecasters predict birth rates will fall below the replacement rate in most countries by the end of the century.2
Hungary boasts one of the broadest policy responses to falling birth rates, and the small European country is becoming an intellectual hub for addressing the issue. However, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz Party’s pro-family policies have been the subject of intense political debate in recent years. One of Hungary’s controversial policies prohibits pro-LGBTQ messaging from being taught to children in public schools, provoking condemnation from human rights groups and the European Union.3
Christians have long debated the role the state should play in addressing social issues, and these matters remain exigent today. This essay provides a theological analysis of Hungary’s pro-family policies. To be clear, it is not an analysis of the effectiveness of Hungary’s policies. Instead, it assesses whether Hungary’s pro-family policies are theologically justifiable. The essay proceeds by first outlining a political theology stemming from God’s covenant with Noah. Second, it provides an overview of Hungarian pro-family policies, and third, it uses the framework of political theology to analyse those policies. The essay concludes by arguing that Hungary’s family policies are theologically justified and, overall, a prudent response to the constraints faced by Hungary’s leadership.
Divine Covenants and Humanity’s Collective Responsibilities
Divine covenants are agreements established by God with His creation, specifying terms and conditions on the relevant parties. Covenants are the primary way through which God interacts with creation, and they are central to understanding not just the biblical story of creation, fall, preservation, redemption, and consummation but also the range of responsibilities and obligations that God has placed upon human institutions.
The Noahic Covenant is essential to God’s design for public life, that is, life outside of the Church that encompasses both Christians and non-Christians, and it provides the proper context for discerning a government’s responsibilities to the people under its protection. As explained below, God preserves the fallen creation through the Noahic Covenant until Christ returns. Christians must avoid taking passages of Scripture that are directed toward either ancient Israel or the church and improperly applying them to contemporary governments. At the same time, people must avoid neglecting humanity’s God-ordained responsibilities under the guise of modern ideological views of church–state separation. A proper understanding of the biblical story and God’s covenants will help Christians avoid these errors.
The Creation Covenant
The creation account in Genesis records God’s implicit covenant with humanity’s representative, Adam.4 After completing His works of creation, God judged creation as good and entered His well-earned rest. Following this pattern of work, proper judgement, and earned rest, God tasked Adam with taking dominion over creation and multiplying and filling the earth. Had Adam and his progeny successfully completed their responsibilities, humanity would have earned eschatological rest with God, but that did not happen. Adam listened to the serpent, made an unrighteous judgment by eating the fruit that God forbade, and plunged humanity into sin. Instead of earning eternal rest with God, Adam’s disobedience earned God’s eternal punishment.
Of course, the story does not end there. It foreshadows the Covenant of Grace, God’s plan for humanity’s redemption. After Adam’s failure and in the context of cursing the serpent, God announced the serpent’s forthcoming defeat through Christ. While the first Adam failed to live a righteous life, Jesus—the final Adam—lived a perfect life yet still chose to endure God’s wrath on humanity’s behalf. Consequently, those who trust in Jesus’s works for their justification before God—and not their own works—can have hope for eschatological rest with God.
The Noahic Covenant: God’s Promise to Preserve Creation
After Adam’s failure, humanity became so violent, wicked, and corrupt that God decided to destroy it with a great flood, saving only Noah and his family. After the flood, God made a covenant with Noah. The Noahic Covenant preserves our fallen creation until Christ returns, vanquishes His enemies, and consummates His kingdom, and it is the correct covenant for understanding humanity’s collective responsibilities through public institutions.
Three features of the Noahic Covenant make it the proper standard for public life and are designed to preserve our fallen creation.5 First, the Noahic Covenant is universal—that is, it applies to everyone and everything. God made the covenant with Noah, the head of humanity’s only family at the time, and it addresses the entire created order, from animals to humans to the cosmic order itself. Therefore, even in modern times, the Noahic Covenant applies to all people, believers and unbelievers alike. This is markedly different from the Covenant of Grace that applies to the Church and the Mosaic Covenant (see below) that primarily applied to ancient Israel. Second, the Noahic Covenant is preservative. It is designed to restrain evil, allowing for a minimum degree of human flourishing. Unlike the Creation Covenant, humanity cannot earn eschatological rest through adherence to the Noahic Covenant. And unlike the Covenant of Grace, the Noahic Covenant contains no promise of redemption. Third, the Noahic Covenant is temporary. It promises to delay God’s judgement and preserve the world for a time. The Noahic Covenant will cease upon Christ’s return, the final judgement, the renewal of creation, and the full establishment of His kingdom.
God calls humanity to three tasks through the Noahic Covenant (see Gen. 9:1–7): (1) to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth; (2) to pursue creativity and technological innovation; and (3) to administer rectifying justice.6 Each calling requires the creation and development of institutions, such as healthy families, enterprise associations, and civil government, respectively.7 Furthermore, the three tasks are related. Communities need successful businesses to feed, clothe, and house their populations, and well-functioning legal institutions are required to order commercial relationships, discourage people from harming one another, and to punish perpetrators and compensate victims when harm does occur, proportionate to the offense (i.e., provide rectifying justice). In the current age, the Covenant’s provisions facilitate the conditions under which the church can fulfil its commission.8
‘Through the Noahic Covenant, God preserves humanity by calling it to be fruitful and multiply’
The emphasis of the Noahic Covenant is on the first task. The command to be fruitful and multiply is listed twice: once at the beginning and once at the end of the God-given obligations.9 This implies that the calls to develop enterprise and government institutions should be in service to the development of healthy families.10 In other words, through the Noahic Covenant, God preserves humanity by calling it to be fruitful and multiply and by calling upon humanity to develop enterprise and government institutions in the service of healthy families. As described above, this task is not new. The Noahic Covenant reaffirms the Creation Covenant’s call to be fruitful and multiply.
The novel component of the Noahic Covenant is humanity’s collective call to provide rectifying justice. Genesis 9:5–6 reads: ‘And I will require a penalty for your lifeblood; I will require it from any animal and from any human; if someone murders a fellow human, I will require that person’s life.’ This portion of the Noahic Covenant permits and requires communities to develop coercive institutions, especially in the form of civil government, to deter and punish interpersonal harm and restore victims. The call to provide justice through coercive force is suited for our corrupt, fallen world. The Creation Covenant did not authorize coercive force because it was not needed prior to the fall.
Excluded from the Noahic Covenant is collective responsibility for enforcing proper worship and mandating the love of one’s neighbours. The obligations to love God and neighbour remain essential summaries of morality. However, the Noahic Covenant only obligates communities to punish people who harm others. Absent from the Covenant is a command to punish people for not giving God proper worship, and civil authorities are not responsible for punishing people who fail to love others to the extent required by God’s eternal law.
While the nature of morality remains unchanged, the Noahic Covenant is suited for humanity’s fallen condition. It establishes humanity’s collective responsibilities for preserving and expanding human communities in the fallen world. After the fall, humanity is no longer capable of taking dominion of creation in the fullest sense as originally mandated in the Creation Covenant. The Noahic Covenant merely calls and equips humanity to preserve and expand human communities. Human efforts to retake dominion on God’s behalf and establish Christ’s kingdom through civil government run afoul of God’s covenants and are bound to fail.
A Note on the Mosaic Covenant
The Mosaic Covenant played an integral role in the biblical story as well. God called His chosen people out of Egypt and gave them the Promised Land. Similar to the Creation Covenant, it contained work-based elements that recapitulated Adam’s trials in the Garden of Eden.11 If the Jewish people followed God’s laws established in His covenant with Moses, they could remain in the land. However, the Covenant’s laws, the people’s inability to keep them, and the sacrificial system designed to atone for their failures, pointed the Israelites towards their need for a saviour and foreshadowed Christ’s once-and-for-all atoning sacrifice.
God made the Mosaic Covenant specifically with the Jewish people. Unlike the Noahic Covenant, not all of its provisions apply to all of humanity. While the Covenant does contain organic continuity with the Covenant of Grace (God brings about the Messiah through the Jewish people, and the sacrificial system points toward Christ’s sacrifice), God did not design the Mosaic Covenant’s ceremonial laws, sacrificial system, and theocratic government to apply to governments outside of ancient Israel.
The Natural Law
One may question how people unfamiliar with Scripture know their God-given responsibilities, including those established through the Noahic Covenant. This question is especially pressing given humanity’s fallen nature. Genesis 6 exemplifies the extent of humanity’s moral corruption after the fall and before the flood. This was a time when ‘every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time’ (from Gen. 6:5). Understanding natural law provides the answer to these important questions.
As defined by theologian David VanDrunen, ‘natural law refers to the law of God made known in the created order’.12 God makes known to humanity the tasks to which He calls it and the standards to which He holds it. An implication of image bearing includes humanity’s ability to discern right from wrong within the moral order that God wove into the fabric of creation. Even after the fall, humans can distinguish immoral actions from moral ones and are therefore responsible to God for all of their choices.13 In summary, ‘God makes known the basic substance of his moral law through the created order itself. Human beings therefore know this law simply by virtue of being human and living in the world, even apart from access to Scripture or other forms of special revelation.’14
The natural law is more than just a series of rules that one must follow—it is God’s moral order, and engaging in actions that produce outcomes in accordance with the natural law requires wisdom (or what philosophers often refer to as prudence). Wisdom is ‘a moral and intellectual power by which people understand which courses of conduct are good and bad and become able to put this knowledge into skilful practice’.15 Developing wisdom requires careful observation of the world around us in order to perceive patterns and tendencies and discern courses of action that advance moral outcomes.16
Wisdom is needed to advance all of humanity’s God-given responsibilities, including those stipulated in the Noahic Covenant. It is important to note, however, that wise practices may vary according to historical and cultural contexts, and different constellations of customs and norms may promote society-wide practices that advance humanity’s Noahic responsibilities to greater or lesser degrees. In this sense, the development of wise, natural-law-advancing practices is a communal endeavour.17
God’s Design for Marriage
Humanity’s primary collective responsibility is procreation, and communities should develop enterprise and government institutions in service to this obligation. This begs the question, what is the proper context for procreation? The answer is marriage. Marriage constitutes the most basic building block of society and is the proper context for procreation and family life. Theologian Andrew T. Walker defines marriage as ‘the conjugal union of one man and one woman united to one another within a permanent and monogamous bond that is, absent any medical problems, ordered to procreation. It is an institution that provides an outlet for safeguarding procreative potency, sexual fulfilment, and relational companionship.’18
The Westminster Confession of Faith summarizes the four purposes of marriage as conveyed in the Bible.19 These are (1) assistance and companionship for husband and wife, (2) the proper context for procreation and raising children, (3) the proper context for the expression of humanity’s sexual nature, thus decreasing the temptation for extramarital sexual relations, and (4) for Christian parents, bearing children who are members of the church. Furthermore, marriage also reflects Christ’s relationship with the church (e.g., Eph. 5:22–33).20
However, as image-bearers and through the natural law, humans are capable of reasoning God’s design for marriage, even without the assistance of Scripture or one of the church’s historic confessions. Although admittedly a streamlined explanation, a causal chain of natural-law reasoning to understand the purpose of marriage would go something like this: The existence of a good, just, and all-powerful God is apparent to humanity through creation. Humanity’s capacity for moral reasoning proves that humans are different from other animals, therefore made in God’s image, and morally responsible for their actions. God created humans complementary, male and female; therefore, God made men and women to produce children. Marriage is the proper context for human reproduction. A marriage is a sexually exclusive and permanent relationship between a man and a woman, and it is ordered not just toward procreation but also the nurturing and development of children.21 Sexual exclusivity and permanency forge deep bonds of commitment and mutual support between husband and wife. Sexual exclusivity also allows for the clear delineation of the father’s parenting responsibilities, and a permanent marriage relationship with a committed father and mother is the best context within which to raise children.
Societies around the world view the family institution as a moral good. A study by Oxford University researchers investigating the presence of universal moral principles concludes that helping family members by, for instance, being a loving mother or a protective father is a universal moral value.22 Furthermore, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a human rights treaty ratified by nearly every country, states that ‘[t]he family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State’, and that men and women have a right to marry.23 All this should not be surprising since all humans are image-bearers capable of discerning humanity’s God-given responsibilities to procreate within the family, unite with one mother and one father, that is, within the context of marriage.
God’s Design for Government: Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 in light of the Noahic Covenant
The Noahic Covenant has important implications for how we understand the role of government. The God-ordained role of government is stated in Romans 13:1–7 and 1 Peter 2:13–14, with the latter being the most concise: ‘[13] Submit to every human authority because of the Lord, whether to the emperor as the supreme authority [14] or to governors as those sent out by him to punish those who do what is evil and to praise those who do what is good.’ Similarly, Romans 13 states that governing authorities are responsible for punishing bad conduct (verses 2–4) and approving good conduct (verse 3). The question arises as to what exactly it means for government authorities to praise or approve of good conduct. According to theologian Wayne Gruden, God authorizes the government to establish policies that promote the common good.24
Indeed, governments are responsible for punishing evil and rewarding good; however, these responsibilities should be read in light of the Noahic Covenant. In other words, the government can be seen as acting within its God-ordained authority when it punishes evil and rewards good pursuant to the tasks of the Noahic Covenant: supporting healthy families, incentivizing and regulating a productive economic system, and punishing those who harm others.25 To be sure, the Noahic Covenant and the passages from Romans and 1 Peter referenced above do not authorize the government to enforce proper doctrine within the church or require individuals to make religious confessions. And the government is not responsible for spreading the gospel, the good news of Christ’s redemptive work. That responsibility belongs exclusively to the Church.
Viewed through the lens of the Noahic Covenant, governments act within their God-ordained boundaries when they create policies that enable or encourage healthy families. Of course, determining whether government action is productive or counterproductive in advancing Noahic Covenant ends is a legitimate concern, but one relegated to the realm of wisdom (i.e., prudence). Many tasks are best advanced through civil society institutions or the market economy, but not all and not in every situation. And certainly, the government’s reach into the God-ordained institution of the family is justified only in extreme cases such as domestic abuse. Nevertheless, God permits government activity that supports the tasks established by the Noahic Covenant.
In addition to the legitimate role government can play in promoting the common good (within the confines of the Noahic Covenant), governments legitimately engage in policies designed to protect citizens from harm. In its most obvious forms, government institutions legislate, enforce, and adjudicate laws designed to deter one person from harming another. When criminal behaviour does occur, governments rightly punish wrongdoers and seek to recompense harmed parties. Admittedly, giving governments too much power may result in them engaging in corrupt and even tyrannical behaviour, so government limitations are rightly instituted to prevent this type of harm from occurring.
‘Supporting families through public policy falls within the bounds of government’s God-ordained responsibilities’
However, tyranny and corruption come from sources other than government, even if in softer forms that are more difficult to identify. Governments act legitimately when they impede these subtler forms of harm; governments act illegitimately when they promote them. For instance, licentious societies produce citizens without virtue. Over time, as people are socialized into value systems that undercut the Noahic Covenant’s tasks, that society will likely fail its Noahic responsibilities. Governments—and societies as a whole—rightly work to protect people from this tyranny, too, by socializing citizens into customs, norms, and traditions that inculcate in a society the wisdom needed to discern conduct that advances Noahic responsibilities in particular historical and cultural circumstances.
Hungary’s Family Policies
Under the direction of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the Fidesz Party, Hungary significantly reformed its Fundamental Law (i.e., Hungary’s constitution) in 2011 and added a definition of family and marriage in 2020. Hungary’s Fundamental Law now recognizes the family and the nation as the principal building blocks of Hungarian society and defines marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman. Article L of the Fundamental Law provides the state’s definition of marriage and commits the Hungarian government to supporting families:
- Hungary shall protect the institution of marriage as the union of one man and one woman established by voluntary decision and the family as the basis of the survival of the nation. Family ties shall be based on marriage or the relationship between parents and children. The mother shall be a woman; the father shall be a man.
- Hungary shall support the commitment to have children.26
Because the purpose of this article is a theological analysis and not a policy analysis, a general overview of Hungary’s pro-family policies will suffice.
Financial Assistance and Incentives
Many Hungarian family-related policies are designed to alleviate the financial burdens that raising children places on families. Hungary’s state secretary for families at the Ministry of Culture and Innovation, Ágnes Hornung, says the Hungarian government is ‘committed to ensuring that those who have children receive help from the government in all areas of life and that they are not financially worse off than those without children.’27
A suite of government policies provides financial assistance for Hungarian families and incentivizes them to grow larger. Married couples can apply for financial assistance when preparing for the birth of a baby, and the entire loan is forgiven if the couple has three or more children.28 Another programme provides low-interest home mortgages and other housing subsidies.29 In terms of childcare support, various policies provide payments to parents and grandparents who stay at home to care for children, and the ‘Women 40’ policy allows women to retire after 40 years of work to help care for their grandchildren.30 The government also subsidizes childcare businesses. Many of these financial benefits end when the child turns three years old. This encourages parents to either have more children or for mothers to return to work.31 And most benefits are connected to marriage, incentivizing couples to marry and stay married.32
Hungarian tax policy is also designed to enable and incentivize married couples to have more children. Generous child tax deductions reduce the tax burden on families so that ‘the average Hungarian family with three or more children essentially pays no personal income tax’.33 Women who have four or more children are exempt from personal income taxes for the rest of their lives,34 and the state forgives the student loans of women who have three or more children.35 And because women who have their first child prior to their thirties tend to have more children, Hungarian policy rewards women who have children earlier in life by exempting them from income tax until they turn 30.36
Cultural Policy
Hungarian policymakers realize that financial decisions are only one component of peoples’ decisions to marry and have children. Cultural factors matter, too, and the Hungarian government seeks to create a pro-family culture through public policy and institution building. With this aim in mind, the government established the biennial Budapest Demographic Summit in 2015. The leaders of 60 governments and numerous civil society groups attended the most recent summit to discuss approaches to bolstering family life and increasing birth rates.37 This regular summit places Budapest at the centre of global efforts to reverse the demographic declines faced by an increasing number of countries. In 2018 the government founded the Mária Kopp Institute for Demography and Families,38 a think tank to study pro-family policies, and it created a series of family festivals and awards for family-friendly cities, tourist activities, and workplaces.39 Furthermore, the Hungarian public-school curriculum includes moral education and pro-family messaging, and public schools allow parents to opt their children into ‘religious curricula authorized by ecclesiastical bodies’.40
Hungary’s most controversial pro-family policies relate to LGBTQ issues. Former Hungarian president Katalin Novák argued that a key component of supporting families is protecting children from LGBTQ ideology.41 Hungary’s public policy reflects this goal. Hungarian law prohibits the sharing of pro-LGBTQ content to minors.42 This law affects the public education curriculum, restricts pro-LGBTQ television programming to late-night timeslots, and requires businesses and venues to conceal pro-LGBTQ materials when those materials could be accessible to minors.43 While Hungary does recognize same-sex civil unions,44 Hungarian law prohibits same-sex couples from adopting children, and it bars the state from recognizing a person’s claim to have changed their gender.45
Though this issue has garnered less attention than Hungary’s approach to LGBTQ values, Hungary does maintain some restrictions and limitations on abortions. Abortions are allowed in Hungary in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, even though the Fundamental Law guarantees protection for the life of the foetus.46 However, women must first undergo counselling and listen to the foetus’s heartbeat before undergoing the procedure.47
Progressive advocacy groups strongly oppose these policies,48 and the backlash against Hungary’s LGBTQ-ideology-restricting laws has been a driving force behind the intense economic and political pressure placed on the Orbán government by the European Union and the Biden administration.49 However, it should be noted that Hungarians maintain the right to voice criticisms of the Orbán government’s pro-family laws through a variety of avenues, such as public demonstrations and written criticisms.50
Results
Hungary’s family policies have borne fruit. Between 2010 and 2021, marriage rates have nearly doubled while divorce rates have fallen by 25 per cent. Abortion rates have decreased by more than a third over the same period.51 Birth rates have increased from 1.23 per woman in 2011 to above 1.5 in 2023.52 These numbers are even more impressive when compared with the demographic trends of Hungary’s neighbours, which have mostly worsened over the same period.53 These results are not cheap, though. Hungary now spends the equivalent of 5 per cent of its GDP supporting families.54
Theological Analysis
Supporting families through public policy falls within the bounds of the government’s God-ordained responsibilities. The Noahic Covenant tasked all of humanity with increasing in number. And when this task is clarified through the calls in Romans 13:1–7 and 1 Peter 2:13–14 for governments to reward good behaviour, governments rightly establish policies that encourage Noahic ends such as healthy families. Therefore, if families in a particular society are unhealthy and the population is declining, government action to strengthen family life is, theologically speaking, permitted.
However, even when government policies in a particular area are permitted, or even needed, they may not be prudent. Wise government policies are the product of careful study and analysis of particular societies and the policies meant to influence them. Policymakers must always be aware of how citizens are responding to the incentives they create, whether intended or unintended, and be willing to make changes when necessary. Based on the Orbán government’s emphasis on family policy and its creation of summits and institutes focused on demographic and family issues, this appears to be the case in Hungary. Overall, Hungary’s combination of subsidies and tax policies designed to enable and encourage family life is paying modest dividends, and even if they are financially costly, one can reasonably argue that the results are worth the price given the importance of families to society.
Government is not only responsible for rewarding good behaviour; it is also responsible for punishing and deterring bad behaviour, especially when bad behaviour harms another person. As established in the Noahic Covenant, the God-ordained role for government includes punishing those who harm others and working to deter harm from occurring in the first place. The government’s obligation to prevent harm and punish bad behaviour is relevant for addressing the influence of LGBTQ ideology.
Generally speaking, the phrase ‘LGBTQ ideology’ encompasses the perspectives that assume that gender and sexuality are social constructs. This ideology teaches that people should be free to choose their gender and sexuality and that moral criticisms of one’s choices in these areas are morally impermissible. It is often paired with critical theory, a worldview that conceptualizes societies as systems of embedded, exploitative social binaries where social privileges, in the case of LGBTQ issues, unjustly benefit traditional views of gender, sexuality, and marriage. Proponents of LGBTQ ideology seek to dismantle the dominance of traditional views of marriage and family and normalize alternative perspectives. LGBTQ ideology, especially when paired with critical theory, runs counter to the natural law understanding of family life that recognizes God’s fixed design for men, women, sexuality, and marriage. This brings us to the key question: what role should the state play in addressing LGBTQ ideology?
Governments act outside their God-ordained bounds when they promote LGBTQ ideology. In the United States, nearly a third of Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ, more than any other generation.55 Although a multifaceted phenomenon, the promotion of LGBTQ ideology in public schools is likely contributing to the rise of LGBTQ identity among younger generations. Humanity’s primary assignment in the Noahic Covenant is to be fruitful and multiply within the God-ordained institution of marriage. LGBTQ ideology explicitly subverts this responsibility. Promoting LGBTQ values to children is a form of harm because it encourages relationships for which God did not design humanity. Consequently, Hungary is right to exclude LGBTQ ideology from public schools. In fact, the promotion of LGBTQ values in public schools is a misuse of government authority.
In place of LGBTQ ideology, Hungarian schools teach traditional family values (via a secular ethics course) and allow parents to opt their children into faith and ethics courses taught by what Hungarian law defines as an established ecclesiastical body.56 However, the Hungarian education curriculum could justifiably go further and root its teaching of family values in the God-created order accessible to all image-bearers via the natural law. If not, students may come to view arguments supporting traditional marriage as dogmatic and arbitrary. The state does not exceed its authority by implementing an education curriculum that recognizes God’s existence. The existence of God is apparent to all through the natural law and a necessary starting point for recognizing that humanity’s moral responsibilities are not arbitrarily determined or socially constructed.
Conservative critics of Hungary’s family policy might convey additional criticism. While they would support Hungary’s decision to forego recognizing same-sex marriage and proscribe same-sex couples from adopting children, they might criticize Hungary’s recognition of same-sex civil unions. The same dynamic could be applied to the abortion issue, where conservatives would support Hungary’s existing abortion restrictions but criticize the Orbán government’s inability (or unwillingness) to legislate the additional restrictions that Hungary’s Fundamental Law already permits.
These and other policies to promote family life, punish wrongdoing, and avert harm to Hungarians would be justified according to the political theology articulated above. However, that does not mean additional steps in these areas would be wise or beneficial. Political leadership, especially in a democracy, can only go as far as its constituencies and political tradition allow.
‘The Orbán government’s family policies are prudent’
There is biblical support for this logic.57 As recorded in Matthew 19, some Pharisees, hoping to elicit a controversial response, asked Jesus if divorce is permissible since the Mosaic Law allowed it. Jesus responded by recalling the creation account. He used a natural law defence to remind the Pharisees that God made humanity male and female (Gen. 1:27; 5:2) and that a man and a woman leave their respective parents to become one flesh through marriage (Gen. 2:24). God only allowed divorce in ancient Israel because of the peoples’ moral corruption. He did not give his moral approval to divorce. VanDrunen concludes from this account the following: ‘No civil law code in this fallen world can prohibit and punish every sin or try to right every wrong. All civil law must be accommodated to the circumstances and weaknesses of the people it governs, as the Christian tradition has long recognized.’58
Decades of communist rule stifled the Christian faith in Hungary and damaged Hungarian society, and modern progressive values have been no less forgiving on Western civilization’s moral compass. Furthermore, international pressure from the European Union, the United States, and NGOs, already intense, would reach fever pitch if, for instance, Hungarian legislators further restricted access to abortion. Leadership in a small country such as Hungary must take domestic and international political factors into account when determining policy. Consequently, attempts by politicians to establish theologically and morally sound policies that run too far ahead of public opinion could be politically reckless. Those supporting pro-family policies would do no good by pushing Fidesz too far, causing it to lose an election and empowering a progressive party to re-establish the status quo for family policy much further to the political left.
At the same time, conservative leaders in Hungary must not forget law’s pedagogical function; that is, the fact that public policy teaches citizens moral lessons. Americans saw this first-hand after public approval for same-sex marriage increased dramatically after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling created a right to same-sex marriage.59 Consequently, when in the midst of political and strategic action, political and religious leadership should be sure to clearly distinguish between moral behaviour and politically necessary compromises. If not, Hungarian society could come to confuse public policies established under political constraints with moral endorsements.
To the dismay of social conservatives, many conservative leaders seem almost eager to move their political party leftwards on social issues to avoid the left’s condemnation and the controversy that follows it, but Prime Minister Orbán is not among them. Orbán and the Fidesz leadership are seeking lasting change to Hungarian politics and culture. They recognize that pro-life and pro-family issues are not just legal disputes; they are culture-wide struggles, and they must be addressed as such. Hungarian conservatives are not surrendering on these issues, and they are not acting recklessly. They are proceeding strategically and playing the long game. Overall, given the prevailing circumstances, the Orbán government’s family policies are prudent.
NOTES
1 ‘The Pro-natalist Turn: Putting a Price on Them’ The Economist (25 May 2024).
2 ‘The Pro-natalist Turn: Putting a Price on Them’.
3 Ryan Thoreson, ‘LGBTQ Rights under Renewed Pressure in Hungary: Children Harmed in the Name of Protection’, Human Rights Watch (15 February 2022), www.hrw.org/news/2022/02/15/lgbt-rights-under-renewed-pressure-hungary; ‘EU Votes to Faction over Hungary’s Anti-LGBTQ Law’, BBC (8 July 2021), www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57761216.
4 This explanation of the Creation Covenant is drawn from David VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order: A Biblical Theology of Natural Law, Emory University Studies in Law and Religion (Eerdmans, 2014), 39–74.
5 David VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom: Political Theology in a Fractured World (Zondervan Academic, 2020), 63–64.
6 These three Noahic tasks are identified and explained in VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 81–85.
7 VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 81–85.
8 Jonathan Leeman, ‘What Authority Has God Given to Government?’, 9Marks (29 April 2023), www.9marks.org/article/what-authority-has-god-given-to-governments/.
9 Leeman, ‘What Authority Has God Given to Government?’
10 Leeman, ‘What Authority Has God Given to Government?’
11 David VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order. 282–85.
12 David VanDrunen, Natural Law: A Short Companion (B&H Academic, 2023), 1.
13 VanDrunen, Natural Law, 61.
14 VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 126.
15 VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 139.
16 VanDrunen, Natural Law, 102–103.
17 VanDrunen, Natural Law, 107.
18 Andrew Walker, Faithful Reason: Natural Law Ethics for God’s Glory and Our Good (B&H Academic, 2023), 294.
19 This summary is taken from David VanDrunen, Bioethics and the Christian Life: A Guide to Making Difficult Decisions (Crossway, 2009), 98–100.
20 Walker, Faithful Reason, 302.
21 Walker, Faithful Reason, 294.
22 Oliver Scott Curry, Daniel Austin Mullins, and Harvey Whitehouse, ‘Is It Good to Cooperate? Testing the Theory of Morality-as-Cooperation in 60 Societies’, Current Anthropology, 60/1 (2019). To be clear, the authors do not arrive at their conclusion via natural law reasoning. Their work is an empirical study testing the hypothesis that moral behaviour is behaviour that promotes cooperation.
23 United Nations Human Rights: Office of the High Commissioner, ‘International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Part III, Article 23’, www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international- covenant-civil-and-political-rights. Members of the United Nations General Assembly wrote the Treaty in 1966, at a time when the generally accepted definition of marriage was between a man and a woman. The Treaty went into force on 23 March 1976.
24 Wayne Grudem, Politics According to the Bible (Zondervan, 2010), 80–82.
25 This is a departure from VanDrunen’s political theology in Politics after Christendom. VanDrunen limits government actions to providing public goods and administering retributive justice. He rejects the notion that Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 permit governments to reward or incentivize positive behaviour. See Politics after Christendom, p. 337, for VanDrunen’s interpretation of Romans 13:3–4). Additionally, VanDrunen emphasizes the commonness of government (see Politics after Christendom, Ch. 1). This commonality is compromised through government’s over-engagement in the economy, healthcare, etc., VanDrunen argues, since all policy positions stem from values to which all people cannot agree, excluding some people and groups. VanDrunen’s critics accuse him of being too libertarian.
26 Simon P. Kennedy, ‘Demographic Collapse and Hungarian Family Policy, Part I’, The European Conservative (29 February 2024), https://europeanconservative.com/articles/essay/demographic-collapse-and-hungarian-family-policy-part-i/.
27 Gergely Dobozi, ‘“Hungary Continues to Be an Honest Broker of Family Policy during the EU Presidency”: An Interview with State Secretary Ágnes Hornung’, Hungarian Conservative (28 April 2024), www.hungarianconservative.com/articles/interview/hungary_agnes-hornung_csok_family_policy_eu-presidency_state_subsidized_loan/.
28 This part of the Fundamental Law is quoted in Simon P. Kennedy, ‘Demographic Collapse and Hungarian Family Policy, Part II’, The European Conservative (1 March 2024), https://europeanconservative.com/articles/essay/demography-and-hungarian-family-policy-part-ii/.
29 Kennedy, ‘Demographic Collapse and Hungarian Family Policy, Part II’.
30 Kennedy, ‘Demographic Collapse and Hungarian Family Policy, Part II’. See also Gladden Pappin, ‘Building a Family-Friendly Country: Hungary continues to take the lead in making family and family policy a focus of political life. American conservatives should pay attention’, The American Conservative (6 October 2021), www.theamericanconservative.com/building-a-family-friendly-country/.
31 Pappin, ‘Building a Family-Friendly Country’.
32 Dobozi, ‘Hungary Continues to Be an Honest Broker of Family Policy during the EU Presidency’.
33 Kennedy, ‘Demographic Collapse and Hungarian Family Policy, Part II’.
34 Kennedy, ‘Demographic Collapse and Hungarian Family Policy, Part II’.
35 Pappin, ‘Building a Family-Friendly Country’.
36 Kennedy, ‘Demographic Collapse and Hungarian Family Policy, Part II.’
37 Budapest Demographic Summit (V. Budapesti Demográfiai Csúcs), 2023, https://budapestidemografiaicsucs2023.hu/en.
38 Mária Kopp Institute for Demography and Families.
39 Pappin, ‘Building a Family-Friendly Country’.
40 Pappin, ‘Building a Family-Friendly Country’.
41 Péter Sasvári, ‘PM Orbán Announces “Family Policy 2.0” with the Extension of Lifetime Income Tax Exemption for Mothers at Demographic Summit’, Hungarian Conservative (15 September 2023), www.hungarianconservative.com/articles/current/orban_family_policy_2-0_extension_tax-exemption_ mothers-of-three/.
42 ‘Hungary’s Controversial Anti-LGBT Law Goes into Effect despite EU Warning’, France24 (7 July 2021), www.france24.com/en/europe/20210707-hungary-s-controversial-anti-lgbt-law-goes-into-effect- despite-eu-warnings.
43 Anita Kőműves, ‘Thousands Join Budapest Pride to Protest Anti-LGBTQ+ Policies’, Reuters (22 June 2024), www.reuters.com/world/europe/ thousands-join-budapest-pride-protest-anti-lgbtq-policies-2024-06-22/.
44 ‘Where Europe Stands on Gay Marriage and Civil Union’, Pew Research (28 October 2019), www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/10/28/where- europe-stands-on-gay-marriage-and-civil-unions/.
45 ‘EU Votes for Action over Hungary’s Anti-LGBT Law’, BBC (8 July 2021), www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57761216.
46 ‘Abortion Laws in Europe’, Reuters (15 April 2024), www.reuters.com/world/europe/abortion-laws-europe-2024-04-15/.
47 ‘Abortion Laws in Europe’.
48 For instance, see Lydia Gall, ‘Hungary’s Family Minister Undermines Equality for Women’, Human Rights Watch (17 December 2020), www.hrw. org/news/2020/12/17/hungarys-family-minister-undermines-equality-women.
49 Michael N. Jacobs. ‘Mitch McConnell Misunderstands Hungary’s Foreign Policy’, The European Conservative (11 June 2024), https://europeanconservative.com/articles/analysis/mitch-mcconnell-misunderstands-hungarys-foreign-policy/.
50 Kőműves, ‘Thousands Join Budapest Pride to Protest Anti-LGBTQ+ Policies’.
51 Gladden Pappin, ‘The Family Policy Imperative’, Public Discourse (17 April 2021), www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2021/04/75329/.
52 Dobozi, ‘Hungary Continues to Be an Honest Broker of Family Policy during the EU Presidency’.
53 Pappin, ‘The Family Policy Imperative’.
54 Pappin, ‘The Family Policy Imperative’.
55 Nicole Chavez, ‘Gen Z Adults Identify as LGBTQ at Much Higher Rates Than Older Americans, Report Shows’, CNN (25 January 2024), www.cnn.com/2024/01/25/us/gen-z-adults-lgbtq-identity-reaj/index.html.
56 U.S. Department of State, ‘2020 Report on International Religious Freedom: Hungary’, (2020), https://2021-2025.state.gov/reports/2020-report-on- international-religious-freedom/hungary/.
57 This account is described in VanDrunen, Natural Law, 93–96.
58 VanDrunen, Natural Law, 95.
59 Justin McCarthy, ‘U.S. Same-Sex Marriage Support Holds at 71% High’, Gallup (5 June 2023), https://news.gallup.com/poll/506636/sex-marriage-support-holds-high.aspx.
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