A History of Resilience
Rev. Diane Rollert
Unitarian Church of Montreal, 27 January 2023
My friend Beth Norton wrote the music for the traditional Transylvanian blessing “Székely Áldás” twenty years ago, while in Quebec. She had heard the words during a gathering at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly that was held in Quebec City in 2002. She says that the music wrote itself. It came to her out of nowhere.
Not long after, she led the choir of the First Parish of Concord, Massachusetts, across Transylvania to perform in Unitarian villages that had been holding onto their faith for centuries. This beautiful blessing was the gift that was shared and received wherever they went:
Where there is faith there is love,
Where there is love there is peace,
Where there is peace there is blessing,
Where there is blessing there is God.
Where there is God, there,
There is no need.
The blessing had never been set to music before. But it didn’t take long before Transylvanian Unitarians were singing it with Beth’s tune, as an offering to their North American guests.
Beth’s choir members spoke of being transformed by the experience of meeting their Unitarian siblings on the other side of the world. The villages were poor but beautiful. Goods were still transported by horse and wagon. The visitors found the Transylvanians spirited and loving, and the two groups sang together late into the night, toasting with shotglasses of palinca, a fiery brandy. They had connected as long-lost Unitarian family.
Here’s some context: The Unitarians of Transylvania have been living in Romania as an oppressed minority, in a land that for centuries has been deeply divided along religious and ethnic lines. Their lands have moved back and forth between empires and regimes, but they have always seen themselves as Hungarians. They have survived by maintaining their language, culture and religion, often at great cost and threat to their lives.
When communism fell in Eastern Europe, and the genocidal dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceaușescu, was overthrown, tried and executed, lines of communication were opened with the West for the first time in decades. The Transylvanian Unitarian villages were impoverished, their churches in disrepair. A few North American Unitarians started to make contact. They began to raise funds to rebuild churches and replace church bells.
Then Unitarian Universalist congregations in North America started forming partnerships with Unitarian congregations in Transylvania. At one point, almost 150 Unitarian churches in
Transylvania, and a handful in Hungary, had partner churches in the US and Canada. The Unitarian Church of Montreal had a partner church in Transylvania for a brief time before I arrived. Communication was challenging for some partnerships, including ours, but others have remained strong to this day.
Transylvanian Unitarian history goes back more than 450 years. To me, the story begins when Michael Servetus was burned at the stake in Geneva in 1553 for writing that God was one: a unity, not a trinity. He dared to interpret the Bible for himself and reasoned his way to an understanding of God as existing in all people and all things. The sparks that arose from the flames that consumed Servetus ignited a movement that travelled from a small Italian colony in Geneva to Poland and eventually found their way into the heart of the Transylvanian Unitarian founding father, Francis David (Ferenc Dávid, as he’s known in Hungarian).
Francis David was a religious leader who never stopped evolving. He began as a Catholic priest, became a Lutheran and then a Calvinist, and finally became the founder of the first religious movement to be called Unitarian. The faith he founded in the late 16th century would be echoed in the words of Channing, Emerson and Parker, nearly three hundred years later – even though they never had a direct connection. Francis David preached that God was in everyone and everything, available to every person, without a need for priest or prophet to stand between God and us.
In 2009, I travelled to Romania, to the city of Cluj (which the Transylvanians call Kolosvar in Hungarian). I was there for an international UU conference, and as a pilgrim to finally encounter our deepest Unitarian roots. I stood where Francis David had stood, there in the cathedral in Torda. It was Francis David who in 1568 persuaded King John Sigismund to enact the Edict of Torda, an act of religious tolerance never before seen in Western Europe. King John Sigismund decreed that there would be no state religion. “No one shall be reviled for his religion…for faith is the gift of God.”
We traced the path of Francis David. We took photos by the boulder that now stands inside the vestibule of the Unitarian Church of Kolosvar. It was on this rock that Francis David stood to proclaim the simple unity of God. As the story goes, the people were so moved that they carried him on their shoulders to the church in the square. They say that the entire city converted to Unitarianism that day and four or five hundred Unitarian churches sprung up across the land.
Three years later, in 1571, King John Sigismund was dead at the age of 30. He was replaced by a Catholic monarch. Not long after, Francis David was betrayed and martyred for his refusal to pray to Jesus. He was imprisoned for the sin of innovation.
Thirty or so of us attending the conference ascended the steep hill to the Citadel in Deva, where Francis David was left to die in a cold dungeon. No one knows the exact location of his cell, but we left a wreath on a memorial plaque among the ruins as we sang “Spirit of Life” together. Roots hold me close, wings set me free. We could hear the words of Francis David speak out
across the centuries: “Neither the sword…nor the cross, nor the image of death—nothing will halt the march of truth.”
The heights of Unitarian history in Transylvania were shortlived. In the Unitarian Church of Kolosvar I held the silver communion chalice that Francis David had used, and I wondered how it had been preserved for so long.
The Transylvanian ministers lamented to us that, like many North American churches, their churches were mostly filled with elders. They said that young people rarely came to church, even though they called themselves Unitarians. Life had become too demanding, and religious practice had become optional.
Yet I met impressive young ministers who had made the choice to serve aging communities. They accepted low pay and lived with rough circumstances. These were the sacrifices they were willing to make to keep Unitarianism alive. Their parents and grandparents had kept their faith hidden during the Soviet era. Some had been forced to make bargains that still brought shame. These were tensions that the young ministers had inherited.
One night the entire conference rode in buses to the countryside. It was a beautiful evening as we looked out upon a great mountainous rock shaped like a sleeping giant. We filed into the village Unitarian church. The young minister, who had served in the church for five years, told us of the unusual seating arrangements during church services. The younger women sat on one side in front, with the older women behind, the older men across on the other side of the sanctuary, and the young men in the balcony.
When he first arrived as their minister he had asked his parishioners, “Why don’t you sit together? The back of the church is cold. Won’t the older women be more comfortable up close?” But the members of the congregation refused to budge, especially the older women, who liked to keep an eye on the younger ones. Their seating pattern had been a tradition for hundreds of years, and they had no intention of changing for some young upstart minister.
Then he told us about this church’s tradition of communion, which they did four times a year, in remembrance of the teachings of Jesus. For them it involved no crosses, no blood and body of Christ. In this small village church, members came forward to take communion in groups organized by gender and age.
At first the minister found that strange as well. Then one day he was struck by the beauty of the women in their 80s sharing in the ceremony, just as they had done four times a year since they were young girls. Year by year, they had marked the milestones in their lives, through marriages, pregnancies, illnesses and loss. With each communion they were honouring life’s passing together.
Afterwards, we walked to the evening’s festivities at a beautifully restored inn where we ate goulash cooked over an open fire and listened to violinists play Hungarian folk songs. Rev. Ferenc Bálint, bishop of the Transylvanian Unitarian Church at that time, sang for us. He had a beautiful voice. As I watched him interact with the young ministers, I saw a kind soul watching over them with affection. They reflected back love and respect.
Not all was rosy. Frustrations were expressed about the partner church program and our international relationships. The relationships were unequal. The North Americans had the power, while the Transylvanians were dependent on their partners’ money and at the mercy of their changing priorities. As one of the Transylvanian ministers remarked, “The North Americans export their brand of Unitarian Universalism. They don’t think that the Transylvanians have anything to offer.”
It’s been 14 years since I was in Transylvania. A lot has changed. The UU Partner Church Council and the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists were disbanded last year, though the strongest partnerships continue. The Transylvanian Unitarian Church is now known as the Hungarian Unitarian Church, unifying the Unitarians in Hungary and Romania and emphasizing the ethnic nature of the church. A new bishop, Rev. István Kovács, has been installed.
The Hungarian Unitarian Church has strengthened its ties with the Hungarian government, which, as you may know, is becoming increasingly xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic and anti-Semitic under the authoritarian leadership of prime minister Victor Orban. This past October, Unitarian Bishop Kovács was photographed having a tête-à-tête with Orban. He was wearing a flaming chalice on his tie.
The Hungarian government has provided financial support to the Unitarians, which has weakened their connections with UUs in North America. At the same time, the Hungarian Unitarian leadership has taken a strong anti-LGBTQ+ stance, forcing some of the younger ministers to leave or silence themselves. We’re seeing signs of growing racism, particularly against the Roma, as well as anti-Semitism, a disturbing echo of the rhetoric coming out of the Orban government.
In recent days, I’ve spoken with friends who share strong ties to Unitarians in Transylvania. We are all lamenting the changes in our relationships. It is no longer possible to have open conversations. Perhaps the Transylvanians have learned from the Soviet era not to take chances. As one friend said, “They are fifty years behind us.” Maybe… The leadership may be growing more conservative, but I know that there are liberal voices that are currently being silenced. They may not stay quiet forever.
“It’s complicated,” another friend says. We in the West are an imperial power that has been replaced by an authoritarian power. Yet our relationships were and are meaningful and true.
These are people who have kept Unitarianism alive on their own terms. Their resilience has taught us much.
I go back to thinking of Francis David and his constant theological evolution during the 16th century. Perhaps this is where hope still lies. These are difficult times, but brave souls still strive and will continue to strive. Even as our Unitarian siblings in Transylvania are going through bleak times, we need to stay connected for the sake of current and future generations. We cannot afford to lose these relationships, even if our dialogue is limited right now. How else can lessons from the past be preserved and surmounted?
I hold on to these words that have long been attributed to Francis David:
In this world there have always been
many opinions about faith and salvation.
You need not think alike to love alike.
There must be knowledge in faith also.
Sanctified reason is the lantern of faith.
Religious reform can never be all at once,
but gradually step by step.
If they offer something better, I will gladly learn.