„Tovább kell vinnetek” (TKV): grupare a rezistenței anticomuniste

"Tovább kell vinnetek" (TKV): Anti-Communist Resistance Group

Abstract

The article deals with the history of the only Adventist phenomenon of organized anti-communist resistance in Romania on the part of a significant group of pastors belonging to the Hungarian minority of Transylvania. The activism of the organized resistance, run under the motto contained in their name “You Have to Take It Further” (in Hungarian: Tovább kell vinnetek [TKV]), purposed to satisfied the deep moral and spiritual needs of the Adventist Church of Romania in the 1970s. Such activism consisted of TKV’s protest against, and departure from, the Church’s official leaders’ attitude of compromise and yielding to the communist state’s pressures and lures. The main activity of the group consisted of the production, via translation, of written theological and devotional sources to satisfy the spiritual and intellectual hunger of the pastors and of their churches. The written material they had produced was not submitted to state censorship. Initially, the communist establishment had levelled very serious indictments against the members of TKV, accusing them of anti-government and anti-sate stance. But in the end, the accusations of political and nationalistic involvement were dropped due to the fact that the pastors involved in TKV had only faith-related and religious preoccupations. As a consequence of that, their punishment was only ecclesiastical in nature.