Translated Sermon #14: Standing firm…. by Simén Dániel

For full text go to the menu on top of the UnitarianTorch home page, click on Translated Transylvanian Unitarian Sermons line, and then click on the title: SermonStandingfirm.

Summary of sermon: The sermon was written on December 3, 1956, and posthumously published in 2013.  This sermon has a very unique history, as this was one of the sermons that played a role in the 1957 arrest and interrogation of several Unitarian ministers by the Romanian Secret Police.   All of those ministers were found guilty of various “crimes against the state”, and sentenced to several years of labor camps. What was their crime?  You see, during 1956 a small group of Transylvanian Unitarian ministers put together a booklet of sermons that they were distributing throughout the Unitarian Seminary, and preached in Transylvanian villages. They were found out, and their booklet was confiscated, and the text of several sermons appeared as evidence of crimes, in the transcripts of the interrogations and the trial.  This is one of those sermons in that booklet;  the author suffered dearly just for speaking his mind.  So, who is this author?  Simén Dániel was a unitarian minister in the village of Lupeny till 1940, and after that he worked as a theologian, and a teacher in Kolozsvar.  He was imprisoned in 1959, and released in 1964.  He passed away in 1969.

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