Welcome to the Web Pages

of the

Unitárius Quarterly

Istennek képére és hasonlatosságra, jó cselekedetre újonnan teremtett emberek vagyunk, hogy Krisztus az igaz hit által mi bennünk lakozzék és az ő törvénye a mi szívünkbe beírattassék.

We are people created anew in the image and likeness of God and for good works, so that through the true faith Christ may dwell within us and his law may be written upon our hearts.

Ferenc Dávid

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 traveled 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 as well. 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 the 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!" as well as Dr. Zoltán Sztankóczy's study "Baptism in the Gospels."

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 you are looking for a particular reference, the surest way of finding it will be to use the Atomz UQOL search engine on our Search Options pop-up.

If you do not find what you are looking for within these pages you may use the Heuréka and Ixquick Metasearch engines which are also located on the Search Options pop-up.

Announcing our participation in the Amazon.com Affiliate Program:

As a part of our ongoing effort to secure adequate funding for this project the Unitárius Quarterly On Line has joined the Amazon.com Affiliate Program.

A portion of the proceeds from all sales resulting from referrals from our new Amazon Portal will be returned by Amazon.com for the support of this project.

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 criticism.

Take advantage of the services offered by our site:

On our Readers' Services Pages 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 on site 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 online, please drop our web master an E-mail:

Michael Burp, mburp@juno.com

Visit the links section of our Readers' Services Pages 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 links section.

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.