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Highlighted Events
Pilgrimages To Our Partner Church
Visits to Our Partner Church and Unitarian Sites in Hungary and Transylvania
Over thirty UUAA congregation members and friends have traveled to visit our Partner Church in Kézdivásárhely since we became partners in 1997. We have made lasting friendships with our partners and others along the way. Generally we begin in Budapest, Hungary, and then travel into Romania to Kolozsvar, the headquarters of the Transylvanian Unitarian Church. Our partners live in the southeastern part of the country, so we stop at interesting places as we move along to them. Here are some photos from our trips.
August 2018--led by Phyllis Valentine
Seven UUAA congregants visited our partners in Kezdivasarhely and helped celebrate the 450th anniversary of the Edict of Torda, a declaration of tolerance.
A photo summary of the 2018 trip can be viewed following this link...
June 2014 - Led by Phyllis Valentine
Six UUAA church members, 3 returning and 3 new travelers, again followed a simplified route which allowed for a longer stay with our Partner Church families and more time in our minister’s home village. This link leads to more photos of this trip.
July 2011 - Led by former Assistant Minister Rev. Mark Evens
Seven UUAA church members, led by Rev. Mark, followed a simplified route, staying longer at certain places for an in-depth look at church archives. This link will take you to more photos of this trip.
May 2008 - Led by interim minister Rev. David Keyes
Eighteen UUAA congregants and friends, including our then Interim Minister, the Rev. David Keyes, traveled to Budapest and into Transylvania in May, visiting major Unitarian sites and church archives, and spent a weekend with our Partner Church congregation in Kézdivásárhely. The Reverend Maria Pap, minister of our partner church and Reverend Robert Balint of a Romanian Unitarian church are shown below guiding our First UU of Ann Arbor tour group. This link takes you to more photos of this trip.
Visitors from Transylvania
Visit by Rev. Istvan and Rev. Csilla Buzogany-Csoma, Oct.-Nov. 2017
Istvan and Csilla came to visit in late October 2017. We enjoyed sharing a week with them, participating in many church and area activities--lunches and dinners with others; the church Halloween Party, choir practice, and Sunday services; UM band practice and Hill Auditorium concert; Motawi Tile factory; Henry Ford Museum; our Habitat renovations; Detroit. We had such a good time together. The photo shows Csilla and Istvan, with Jan Bower and our Minister Emeritus, Dr. Ken Phifer
A small group from Ann Arbor were able to visit them in August 2018.
Visit by New Partner Church minister, Rev. Istvan Buzogany-Csoma November 6 – 12, 2013
We hosted our new Partner Church minister, Istvan Buzogany-Csoma, for a week in November 2013. This was his first visit to the United States and our first chance to meet him. During our week together we got to know each other, introduced him to many American and Michigan sights, and enjoyed having him in our pulpit, both preaching and performing. In June 2014, a small group from our church visited him, his family, and our partner congregation in Kézdivásárhely, Romania.
Visit by our partner church former minister, Rev. Maria Pap
September 29-October 4, 2010
We had the wonderful opportunity of hosting Rev. Maria and learning more about our Partner Church and about Unitarianism in Transylvania.
Rev. Pap taught 2 classes, Life and Culture in Kezdivarsahely and Szentivanlaborfalva and The Transylvanian Unitarian Church: Past and Present, as well as providing the reading and sermon at the regular Sunday services on October 3, 2010 reading and sermon at the regular Sunday services on October 3, 2010.
We had time to review the plans for the July 2011 pilgrimage to Transylvania and our Partner Church family.
You can view photos from Rev Pap's visit on this Flickr site .
The Balint family visit, June 2010 
We hosted the Balint family (Robert and Reka, and their children Dalma, and Mattyas) from June 1 until June 8, filling their days and some evenings with a mix of activities. The Rev. Balint is the minister of the ‘Alabaster Village Church’ in Romania and was one of our guides for the 2008 Pilgrimage to Transylvania. Many of you attended the Sunday service on June 6 and heard Rev. Balint speak movingly about Balasz Ferenc.
Many had a chance to interact with the Balints. Ministers and staff showed them around the church buildings and talked about our programs. Walter Slater and Pam Reister provided personalized tours of the UM Graduate Library and the Art Museum. We climbed to the top of Burton Tower. The Khasi Hills committee had lunch with them at Cottage Inn. Margaret & Charlie Pekarek, Cathy & Mike Muha, Phyllis Valentine & Tadd Rosa, and Gretchen & John Jackson hosted dinners in their homes. The Muhas also provided a tour of Chelsea and the Teddy Bear Factory. Many of you attended the Sunday service on June 6 and heard Rev. Balint speak movingly about Balasz Ferenc. YRUU hosted a pizza party afterwards. We traveled to Detroit where we saw the Cultural Center, the UU church, the Renaissance Center, practice flights for a plane race, and enjoyed three round trips on the People Mover. Monday we went to Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum.
A wonderful time was had by all! The Balints were off after our visit to Appleton, WI, then to Summit, NJ, and finally to General Assembly in Minneapolis. They returned home on July 1.
Photographs of our time together are available here.
Sermons and Writings About our Partnership
Sermons and Writings about our Church Partnership
Rev. Maria Pap is the former minister of The Unitarian Church of Kézdivásárhely, Transylvania, our congregation's partner church.
Rev. Ken Phifer: The Transylvanian Unitarian Experience, a sermon from Oct, 1997
Rev. Maria Pap: Walking Together I, a sermon delivered at UUAA in March, 2004
Rev. Maria Pap: Walking Together II, a sermon delivered at UUAA in March, 2004
Rev. Ken Phifer / Gretchen Jackson: Unitarianism in Transylvania, sermon, Feb, 2005
Gretchen Jackson reading for "UU Minutes", Nov, 2006
Rev. Fran Dew: Friendship Saves, a sermon delivered Jan, 2007
Bela Botond Jakabhazi: A Passion for Freedom: The Legacy of Francis David, Jan, 2008
Rev. Maria Pap: Living Stones, a sermon delivered March 2, 2009
Rev. Maria Pap: Indebtedness, a paper written in March 2009
Rev. Maria Pap: The Art of the Impossible, a sermon delivered January 27, 2010
Rev. Robert Balint: Fate of the Prophets, a sermon delivered at UUAA in June, 2010
Rev. Maria Pap: The Attraction of Otherness, sermon delivered at UUAA on Oct 3, 2010
Rev. Mark Evens: Flower Communion in July, 2011
Rev. Maria Pap: a writing on winter time ecumenical gatherings in Transylvania, April, 2012
Partner Church in Transylvania
Get to know our partners and their culture, past and present!
Download a Printable Brochure about the Partner Church Program
Our Partner Church in Kézdivásárhely, Transylvania, Romania
Visitors from our Partner Church
Pilgrimages to our Partner Church
Mission of the UU Partner Church Council
Sermons and writings about our partnership
Getting to Know More About Our Friends at Our Partner Church
Our Partner Church in Kézdivásárhely, Transylvania
Our partnership with the Unitarian Church of Kézdivásárhely, Transylvania formally began by congregational vote in 1997. Our partnership is under the Unitarian Universalist Partner Church Council program. Transylvania was the birthplace of Unitarianism in 1565 and the Unitarian Church has persevered through centuries of hardships. Ethnically Hungarian, Transylvanians have suffered under the Romanian governments of the past decades.
The Unitarian Church of Kézdivásárhely has approximately 80 members.
Our partnership continues under the Rev. Istvan Buzogany-Csoma, who lives in the village of SzentivanLaborfalva with his wife and two daughters.
What does this "partnership" mean for us? Among other things:
- We agreed to work together to establish a spiritually stimulating, mutually respectful, culturally sensitive, active, long-term collaboration with another congregation;
- We agreed to identify ways in which we could provide support for their church and its members;
- We committed ourselves and our children to learn from and about them in order to enhance our own understanding of our religious heritage and the people of other cultures who share it with us.
We grew our relationship under the partner church’s original minister, Rev. Maria Pap. In 2012, She and her family moved Kolozsvár to become the Bishop’s administrative assistant. Maria is now the senior minister at the Old Meeting House, a Unitarian church in Mansfield, England.
If you would like to get involved in this program or have questions, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
In April, 2021, the Partner Church group gave an overview of our UUAA partner church program and Q&A session that was recorded over Zoom. You can watch this "Congregational Life" session by clicking on this YouTube video (length 32:43)
For photos of pilgrimages we have taken to visit our partners, see the Pilgrimages page.
We have enjoyed getting to know the current minister of our partner church, the Rev. István Buzogány-Csoma, his wife Csilla and daughters Boglárka and Eszter . He visited us in Fall 2013 and in 2017.
You can view photos of the visits:
Rev. István Buzogány-Csoma and his family live in the nearby village of SzentivanLaborfalva, where he is also the Unitarian minister. Small groups from UUAA travelled to Kézdivásárhely to visit in 2014 and 2018.
2018 visit to Szentivanlaborfalva
As Rev. Maria Pap said in a sermon delivered to our congregation in 2007, "In every partnership, be it between individuals or communities, there comes a time when there is a longing for depth, a longing for a vision of where this particular partnership is going, of where this long walk is going to take us."
For the twentieth anniversary of the Partner Church program, Maria contributed to the written program with a paper called 'Inspiration'. If you would like to read Rev. Maria's sermons and other sermons and writings about our Partnership, please follow this link.
Visitors from Transylvania
We have enjoyed having visits from our Partner Church family and other Transylvanian Unitarians. Follow this link for photographs and to read more about our visitors.
Pilgrimages to Transylvania
Over thirty UUAA congregation members and friends have travelled to visit our Partner Church in Kézdivásárhely since we became partners in 1997. To read more about the trips and view photos, follow this link.
Unitarians in Transylvania
The birthplace of Unitarianism was in Transylvania, then a part of Hungary, in 1565. Unitarianism flourished there briefly during the Reformation and then endured harsh persecution. Transylvania’s geographic position, caught between east and west, linguistically and ethnically Hungarian, made the position of Unitarians even more perilous. After World War I, the land area of Transylvania was transferred politically to Romania, but it never became Romanian in anything other than nationality. World War II was especially difficult, as the country was invaded by opposing forces and the political situation swung from one to the other. Jews, Roma, Unitarians, and other smaller ethnic groups were pursued and often sent to hard labor or extermination camps. After the war ended, the Communist regime continued the campaign against religious and ethnic minorities.
But Transylvanian Unitarians continue to practice their faith, maintaining ethnic and faith traditions that are now more than 400 years old. The Unitarian Universalist Partner Church Council was founded in June 1993 to focus and coordinate the enormous grassroots energy of dozens of UU churches which had formed partnerships with Unitarian churches in Central Europe following the collapse of Communism in December 1989. There had been programs established in the 1920s, but most had not been sustained during the Communist years. Most have been established or re-established since the fall of Communism.
Hungarian-speaking Transylvanians continue to struggle to survive in the Romanian government system. Many have not had their land and property returned to them since 1989. The Partner Church programs such as ours have contributed support, both financial and personal, to their fellow churches. The model of their faith and perseverance has strengthened us in return.
Here is a reflection on what we gain from our partnership:
“When I close my eyes, I see the faces of the people of my partner village and remember the things I learned from them.
They taught me about trust.
They taught me about perseverance in spite of repeated hardships.
They demonstrated the value of community.
And they showed me again how to experience joy in the simple things of life.”
—Leta Thornton
Mission of the Unitarian Universalist Partner Church Council
The mission of the Unitarian Universalist Partner Church Council is to foster and support partner relationships between UU congregations and individuals in the United States and Canada with Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist congregations, orphanages, schools and students in all other countries where partnering is sought and welcomed. These will be of high quality, firmly based, mutually beneficial, responsibly sustained, and linked by a joint and mutual covenant.
We will:
BE a bridge that connects congregations around the world;
REACH across boundaries to collaborate with old and new partners;
CREATE transformational opportunities for pilgrimage and hospitality, for learning and for service;
CHALLENGE ourselves theologically and open ourselves to changed values and behaviors;
ESTABLISH global community as a common commitment of liberal religion;
INITIATE partnerships that promote global friendships, international awareness, human rights, and a better world; and
SUSTAIN this global vision, enlarging and renewing it as new occasions teach new duties.
Get to know our partners and their culture, past and present!
Bread Making:
Bread is still made the old way in the little village of Szentivanlaborfalva, Transylvania, where our Partner Church minister, Istvan, and wife Csilla and children live.
We were fortunate to get some videos on the process, which we put together for you to see. You’ll be viewing a community baker throughout the process, from kneading and rising, heating up the brick oven and removing the coals, putting the bread dough in, and seeing it through to a blackened crust. After a bit of cooling, they beat the burnt parts off with sticks, this picture shows.
We are also fortunate to have Hajnal Minger on our Partner Church team. Hajnal grew up in Transylvania, and she has written an essay about her experiences as a child watching/participating with her grandmother in the process. Take a look at the essay.
Enjoy this bread making video:
Links to Related Information
More about the UU Partner Churches: Unitarian Universalist Partner Church Council web site
More about our Transylvanian roots: UUA Pamphlet: Unitarian Universalist Origins; Our Historic Faith
You can email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for additional information.
