Response to Journal News Article

On August 1, 2009, Journal News Religion Writer Gary Stern published an article about international Unitarian Universalism, based on interviews with people from our Briarcliff-Croton-Ossining congregation.  This theological slant of the article was strange, and the information about our congregations around the world was very imcomplete.  I am preparing a Letter to the Editor and have also offered to work with Mr. Stern on a more comprehensive follow-up (he and I have worked together productively in the past). 

Before those items appear, you might be interested in learning more about our international network.  A visit to this UUA page will give you a comprehensive view of our partner and emerging congregations.

There are many interesting stories in relation to these international affiliates.

• You mentioned the 80,000 Unitarians in Romania, in a religious tradition that goes back 400 years.  They are in the Hungarian speaking villages in the Transylvanian area of the country, and when Ceaucescu launched an ethnic cleansing campaign against that population in the 1980s, Unitarians in the US were very active in bringing that situation to the attention of the West.

• Our congregation in Prague is relatively small now, but in the 1930’s it was one of the largest Unitarian congregations in the world, under the leadership of a Czech minister named Norbert Capek.  He was arrested after the Nazi invasion and put to death at Dachau.

• There have been indigenous Unitarian Congregations in India for two centuries.

• Toribio Quimada began to preach a free and open form of Christianity in the Philippines in the 1950s, and then discovered that a religion much like it existed in the US – Unitarian Universalism.  Quimada planted many village churches before he was murdered in 1989.  His daughter is now active in leading this network of congregations.   CUC is moving toward forming a partnership with a congregation in the village of Doldol on Negros Island.

You will learn more about these communities from time to time in my sermons.  And perhaps you will learn more about this from a future Journal News article.

Rev. Carol