>>23655
The other charming factor was the leading preacher's preaching. He is an uneducated simple provincial bumpkin who barely could/can speak in grammatically correct fashion. But his speeches from the Bible, about the Bible had an elementally captivating power. Until he stopped doing that and started to base his speeches on his own daily life (if guzzled much goose liver he preached temperance, if his wife nagged him much he preached about Jezebel, if he had conflict with a follower he preached about that follower's sin - the preacher couldn't be the sinner ofc - etc).
But with time the leading preacher built up a cult of personality centered around himself and started to break down the will of his immediate followers, held them under emotional terror, and built an inner circle with the only job of execute his will. But this will changed a lot depending on his own fears, general insecurities and his wife's whims. Those in the inner circle were always in constant conflicts with themselves, most had nagging conscious, and also could see the insanity of certain plans and ideas of the leading preacher so one of their job became of managing his ideas and trying to steer it into acceptable directions.
The leading preacher and his wife also built distrust between the members, and between the members and their families. They extracted confessions out of them and used it against them. The wives of the members became informants who ratted out the husbands to the LP's wife who also ordered them to influence their husband's mind in a desired direction. Worth to mention: only men could get hold an office in the strirct hierarchy of the church.
There is the monetary side of things too. They collected tithe. "Into pocket." But also encouraged the believers to donate as much as they could. The fate of hundreds of millions HUF is unknown. They gave jobs to some followers, but either for wage that was barely enough for starvation, or they employed them as voluntary workers for free. In return they said true believers will be rewarded by God and will make them rich - the poor are sinners and should be scorned. This led to the indebtedness of many as they tried to prove to the each other they are well off.
The leading preacher also aspired to lead the country, this is why he sent his men into the SZDSZ which was the only party who tolerated them and they could tolerate. In the party's leadership there were only few "Faithies" but on lower levels there were more and more party soldiers in their colors. And they were the most diligent workers for the liberal party - as long as the leading preacher wished so. And they were controlled with tight reins. "Faithy" representatives of the parliament could be the most busy bees sometimes, but when the leading preacher had no opinion on things or didn't know what to do they were just empty dolls siting on their arses.