Page "Methodism" Paragraph 94

Today, the Hungarian Methodist Church has 40 congregations in 11 districts.

The seceding Hungarian Evangelical Fellowship also considers itself a Methodist church.

It has 8 full congregations and several mission groups, and runs a range of charitable organizations: hostels and soup kitchens for the homeless, a non-denominational theological college, a dozen schools of various kinds, and four old people's homes.

The Fellowship was granted official church status by the state in 1981.

Both Methodist churches lost official church status under discriminatory legislation passed in 2011, limiting the number of recognized churches to 14.

However, the list of recognized churches was lengthened to 32 at the end of February 2012.

This gave recognition to the Hungarian Methodist Church and to two other Methodist-derived denominations – the Salvation Army, which was banned in Hungary in 1949 but returned in 1990, and currently has four congregations, and the Church of the Nazarene, which entered Hungary in 1996 – but not to the Hungarian Evangelical Fellowship.

The legislation has been strongly criticized by the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe as discriminatory.