The
Arc of Our Partnership
How DID we
get into a relationship with another Unitarian congregation in a remote farming
village in Transylvania, Romania?
Back in 1990
when the Berlin Wall and central European communist governments fell, our UU
leaders re-established contact with the Unitarian headquarters in Kolozsvár,
where Unitarianism formed during the Reformation. During WWII and the subsequent communist
years the communications between them had been limited to formalities. We didn’t really know the status of the
churches there except that they were repressed. Top leaders from the UUA
visited Romania immediately after the change in government to assess the
situation, asking how we could help. The response was a request to reinstate a
sister church program that had existed between WWI and WWII.
So under the
leadership of Judit Gellérd a Transylvanian who lives in America, a movement
began to match N. American churches with Transylvanian ones with the urgency of
“saving Transylvanian Unitarians”. And there was urgency.
Many
villages were slated for demolition to make way for factory towns. The majority of ministers were way past
retirement age because the government only permitted half a dozen students to
study theology per year. Teaching
religious education in churches was prohibited.
Hearing these stories, our minister at the time, the Rev. Linda
Whittenberg, responded to the call and asked for a sister church.
Sometime later she received a paper with the
foreign words Felsőrákos and Racosul de Sus, Romania and the name of the
minister, the Rev. József Kotecz. She
wrote a letter describing our church and city and asking if he and his
congregation would like to be sister churches with us.
Near the end
of 1990 came the reply. I quote in part “We feel too that there is a great deal
that can be gained by greater cooperation between the Unitarians in the USA and
those in Transylvania. We accept and we
are happy to be in a Sister-connection with Unitarian Church from Spokane.”
