Our partner church in the little village of Oklánd (!), Transylvania, ties us to the origins of Unitarian churches in the 16th century, during the Protestant Reformation, and to the direct descendants of those founders, Hungarian Unitarians who still keep the faith alive, after centuries of persecution and hardship. Back in the 16th century, Transylvania was a Hungarian-speaking suzerainty whose king, along with many of his subjects, converted to Unitarianism. Today, Transylvania is a province of Romania, but nearly all its Unitarians are still speaking Hungarian. American Unitarian-Universalists (UUs) reached out to our cousins there, in Oklánd and many similar villages, soon after Romania emerged from Communism in 1989. We have had a lively partner church relationship with them ever since.
UUs have exchanged many visits with Transylvanian Unitarians, but we have done far more than that. After decades of war and then Communism, they needed help in creating a new economic foundation – or else these ancient villages were in danger of dying out, and with them their unique brand of Unitarianism. We helped found Project Harvest Hope, which created a successful, modern dairy barn, for cows that grazed not in feed lots but on the hillsides near Oklánd. Now that the dairy barn has over 100 animals, the Harvest Hope Project has transformed itself into a group that works to create a civil society through community organizing. To learn more, go to www.projectharvesthope.org.
Every year since 1994, we, along with other Bay Area churches, have hosted a young minister from Transylvania who came for a year to study at the Starr King School of the Ministry, as part of the Balazs Scholars Program. Every year, too, our church imports and sells crafts made by the people of Oklánd. We have benefited greatly from contact with these warm and kind people, who represent a kind of living history lesson for us and an opportunity to form relationships with many people who share our faith but live in vastly different circumstances. We work closely with the Unitarian minister of the village, Rev. Levente Kelemen, and with his wife Eva.
Our Pilgrimage
In 2011, for the first time in many years, members of our church went on a pilgrimage to our sister church. About twenty members, led by Rev. Kathy Huff, stayed with families in the village for several days, where they participated in a service project (painting the wood for a new fence). The group including seven of our youth, who introduced the game of lacrosse to the village and who taught the village children how to make friendship bracelets, which they exchanged. Many adults and youth took Hungarian folk dance lessons from two young women in the village. The pilgrims also visited nearby historic holy places associated with the founding of the first Unitarian churches in the world. Perhaps most memorable was the church in Torda where the Unitarian King of Transylvania issued a remarkable declaration of religious toleration in 1568, in the midst of one of the most intolerant periods of European history. Many of those who participated found the experience to be transformational.
