Let’s start back in the 16th Century!
The Kingdom of Transylvania, now an area of Romania in Eastern Europe, was ruled by the young King John Sigismund for ten years beginning in 1561. King John invited the religious leaders of the time to debate the tenets of their respective faiths, and he declared the Unitarian debater to have won the day. King John became a Unitarian, but also made the radical decision to institute religious tolerance, issuing an edict that his countrymen could follow the faith of their own hearts. This revolutionary idea died along with the king in 1571. The descendants of those of his people who had taken up Unitarianism as their faith continue to live in pastoral villages in the Homoród Valley. Although it languished as a minority religion, Unitarianism has survived numerous upheavals over the centuries.
Beginning in 1830, when Hungarian-ethnic Transylvanian Unitarians enlisted the help of American Unitarians in their efforts to overcome oppression, through the World Wars and again in 1989 with the overthrow of Nicolae Ceauşescu, when within weeks, a delegation from the Unitarian Universalist Association was in Romania speaking to Unitarian church leaders there, we American Unitarians have partnered officially and unofficially with Transylvanian Unitarian churches. Now the Unitarian Universalist Partner Church Council (www.uupcc.org) has partnerships in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, the Philippines, the Khasi Hills in Northeast India and several African nations.
Through the UUPCC, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lynn in Swampscott has developed ties both personal and financial with the Unitarian congregation of Keményfalva in the Homoród Valley of Transylvania in Romania.
Several UUCGL youth and adults have visited Keményfalva in the past several years, culminating in our recent pilgrimages of two in the summer of 2008 and five in 2010. In addition to supplementing the government stipend for Keményfalva’s minister, UUCGL has been able to assist our partner church financially to make possible the repair of the church and parsonage.
In the summers of 2006 and 2008, we joined with the UU churches in Bedford, MA and Yarmouth, ME, to offer a three-day summer camp experience for the children of our neighboring partner villages. We hope to repeat the experience in a two-year cycle. As part of our own religious education program, we have raised funds for Project Harvest Hope, an organization dedicated to revitalizing the health of cattle stock in the Unitarian villages where subsistence farming and isolation from vigorous breeding stock during the Communist years has seriously weakened milk and beef production.
Read UUCGL member, Lyssa Andersson's reflection, It Takes a Village, about her ministry experiences with the Keményfalva community.
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