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The Unitarian Churches of the
Transylvanian region of Romania and of Hungary are the oldest surviving
Unitarian faith communities in the world today. Founded in the early
decades of the Reformation (c. 1567), they continue to provide an active
witness to a liberal, rational, yet evangelical, Protestant
Christianity.
As the Rev. János
Szász of the Unitarian Church in Hungary has written:
“From
the moment of its birth Unitarian religious thinking has travelled its
own path, but it has never separated itself from the spiritual roots of
Christianity...”
Unitarian
religious thought “...
stresses the importance of the individual, personal experience of and
faith in God; it rejects the dogma of the Trinity and accepts the
humanity of Jesus, whose teachings and example its believers must strive
to follow; it recognizes the value of human beings and respects life
unconditionally; it claims the freedom of conscience and of religion
that rests upon free will and proclaims tolerance toward the thought of
others ... It holds an active, values based Christianity to count
for more than a dogmatic Christianity cast within rigid bounds.”
As a consequence of these principles, the practice
of the Unitarian faith is characterized by “a piety that is free from
dogma; by acceptance of the evolutionary dynamic of religion, with the
stipulation that this development has as its goals the perfection of the
human and the realization of God’s Kingdom; its religious world view
always strives to be scientific, liberal and modern...” [Szász
János: “Az Unitárius
Egyház”; in Egyházak
És Vallások A Mai Magyarországon, Gesztelyi Tamás ed.; Akadémiai
Kiadó, Budapest, 1991.]
For more than four centuries the Unitarian Churches
of Transylvania and Hungary have exercised a significant, creative and
moral influence in the religious life of East Central Europe and in the fields of
education, literature, culture, politics and social reform. Their
historical contributions continue to be of interest to scholars in the
region and around the world.
The main venues for work concerning Transylvanian
and Hungarian Unitarianism are three Hungarian language denominational
periodicals: the quarterly journal Keresztény
Magvető and
magazine Unitárius
Közlöny, published in Cluj (Kolozsvár), Romania, and the magazine Unitárius Élet,
published in Budapest, Hungary. These publications reflect the concerns
of Churches striving to meet the spiritual and temporal needs of their
members and societies.
For Unitarians of Transylvania and Hungary, these
publications are forums in which they meet to explore their spirituality
and faith traditions, reaffirm shared responsibilities and values, and
discuss strategies for meeting the challenges that confront them as
women and men in the modern world, persons of faith, stewards of their
Churches and religious traditions, and as citizens. Through them, they
share the resources that their faith community and its traditions offer
to guide, empower and sustain them.
The purpose of the Unitárius Quarterly
project is to make a broad sampling of the best of the current
literature of the Unitarian Churches published in these three
periodicals available for the first time to interested readers outside
the Hungarian language community.
Featured
in our May issue:
The May 2001 issue of the Unitárius Quarterly On Line is our first to
feature coverage from the Unitárius Közlöny, the bimonthly magazine
of the Unitarian Church in Romania.
The News and Announcements page for the Transylvanian Church includes
reports on the Women's Association and the ODFIE, the Transylvanian
Youth Association.
The Rev. Dávid Gyerő's essay on his recent travels among the
Unitarians of North India's Khasi Hills, "Micsoda Kaland! What an
adventure ...", can be found on our Essays and Studies page.
Rev.
Gyerő, who has spent the past year working with the Unitarian
Universalist Associations' Director of International Programs, the Rev.
Olivia Holmes, and studying in Boston, traveled to India for the
International Council of Unitarians and Universalists' Leadership
Training Conference and the annual assembly of the Unitarians of the
Khasi Hills as a member of both the UUA and Unitarian Church in Romania
delegations.
Highlights
from our April issue:
The April 2001 issue of the UQOL
includes coverage from the Unitárius
Élet of the election and installation of the Hungarian Unitarian
Church's new Bishop, the Rev. Csaba Rázmány and reports on that
Church's very active youth organizations.
The Essays and Studies page presents studies on the traditional
Hungarian observance of Carnival or Farsang by Ildikó Kelemen Lőrinc
and the 17th century Saxon Unitarian memoirist Péter Brózer by Miklós
Kelemen.
An essay by Dr. László Somogyi on the roots of the Feast of the
Epiphany in the Early Christian Church and a sermon by Miklós Kelemen,
"An Easter Remembrance of Eternal Life", appear on the Theology
and Sermons page.
Highlights
from the March issue:
The March issue of the UQOL
features Ágnes Pásztor-Filep's remembrances of her childhood in a
minister's family in the 1940s and of her father the Rev. Imre Filep,
the late Bishop Vicarious of the Hungarian Church.
The Theology and Sermons page offers Rev. Filep's Christmas sermon from
1966 "... and Peace on this Earth!" and Dr. Zoltán Sztankóczy's
study "Baptism in the Gospels."
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A
note for visitors referred to our site by search engines:
Following the posting of
our first issue on March 1, 2001, we found it necessary to reorganize a
few of our pages, moving some content from its original location to a
new URL.
If
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Find out
more about our project:
For
more information about the Unitárius Quarterly
On Line, The Padlás
Project and our sponsoring organization, the First Unitarian
Church (Unitarian Universalist) of Louisville, Kentucky, please
visit our About
the Unitárius Quarterly
page.
We
appreciate your advice, interest and support:
Unitárius
Quarterly On
Line continues
to be a work in progress. If you share our interest in the Unitarianism
of Transylvania and Hungary and in this effort to make the current
literature of these religious traditions available in English
translation, you can lend your support to our efforts by sharing your
comments and criticisms with us.
On
our About
the Unitárius Quarterly
page you will find instructions on how to contact the members
of our working group and a link to our online guest book. Please let us
know what you think of our work and give us the benefit of your
suggestions and criticisms.
Join our new readers'
group, Barátok:
Friends of the Unitárius Quarterly.
Use the Unitarianism On Line Site
Ring link below to visit our SmartGroups
site. Signing up is easy.
Take
advantage of the services offered by our site:
On our Readers'
Services page you will find the following:
Join our E-mail list so
that we may keep you informed about upcoming publications, online events
and changes to our service.
Use our onsite E-mail
service to recommend the Unitárius Quarterly
On Line to
friends and colleagues.
Visit our Unitárius
Quarterly On Line Forum pages. ODFIE,
the youth association of the Transylvanian Church, has recently posted a
document describing their programs and an essay on the Unitarian faith
written by their director, the Rev. László Szabó.
These are our your pages.
If you have documents concerning Transylvanian and Hungarian
Unitarianism that will interest our readers, please add them to our
Forum pages.
Make yourself at home
in our UQOL Chat Room.
This area does not yet see a great deal of activity, but we intend to
begin hosting scheduled discussions in the near future.
Watch
this page for announcements of topics and times. If there is a subject
you would like us to consider for a discussion or someone you believe
our readers would like to meet with online, please drop our web master
an E-mail:
Michael
Burp, mburp@juno.com
Visit our recommended links
section on our Readers' Services page to access other sites concerning
Unitarianism, Transylvania and Hungary.
If your group has a
web site that would be of interest to our readers – or if you know of
one – please add it to our Free – For – All Links Page.
Send an E-mail greeting
card using one of our collection of images associated with the Unitarian
Churches in Transylvania and Hungary.
For recent news from
Hungary and Romania, see our UQOL
RFE/RL Headline News Service on the Readers'
Services Page. For more detailed coverage, follow the link to
the RFE/RL Newsline website.
Find current weather
reports for Budapest, Kolozsvár and other communities in Transylvania
and Hungary in our UQOL
Wunderground Weather Station on our Readers'
Services Page. Click on the Weather Underground webbot for more
complete reports from these and other cities in the region.

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