The Database of Religious Communities of Hungary (MAVALLKA) is an online service that provides public access to data on religious communities in Hungary.
The Database contains the institutional data of all the religious communities, operate in Hungary, such as name, legal status, name of the represents of the community, location (GIS based) and link to their own websites. In addition, it consists of some professional information about them.
Such a database has not existed so far in Hungary, although it would be beneficial in many fields: the national and the local decision making, the media, the researches in Social and Religious Studies.
Article 11 of the EU Treaty of Amsterdam states that the European Union respects and does not prejudice the status under national law of churches and religious associations or communities in the Member States. The Treaty of Lisbon Article 17 also urges to maintain an open, transparent and regular dialogue with the churches and religious organizations. In order to reach that we need have information about the religious communities and to make it available.
It is urgent to make an independent database about religious organizations considering the main characteristic of the EU migration which is changing the consistence of the religious population of the countries, and the fact that the national security also considers it as an important component. Some European countries have had tradition of such a database for decades, i.e. in United Kingdom: INFORM http://www.inform.ac/, in Italy: CESNUR http://www.cesnur.org/, in Switzerland: KIRCHEN http://www.kirchen.ch/.
We emphasize the regional aspect of the database, during the project we help the organizations and communities make networks and cooperate with each other, furthermore we try to strengthen the connections among the university and the communities/churches in the region.
This national IT-based data of the religious communities has a great potential in many areas. It provides an opportunity to make connections among databases we have separated so far (i. e. census and local community data). It can make the research easier since the database consists of several type of data in the same place. It also provides the opportunity to make comparative studies.
In addition, it can give a free access to anyone to get a useful information about religious communities in Hungary.
It can be useful for the secondary and tertiary education since it is a contemporary, updated database.