The Protestant Theological Institute in Kolozsvár/Cluj was officially founded in 1948 after the Reformed Theological Seminary merged with the Unitarian Theological Seminary. However, the current Seminary has roots going back as far as 1895 when the Theological Faculty of the Evangelically Reformed Church was added to the local university in Kolozsvár/Cluj. The building acts both as an academic facility and as a residence hall for both the students and the faculty. It is interesting to note that the Seminary receives no funds from the State but is entirely supported by donations from various churches.
Currently, there are some 200 students taught by a faculty of 24 professors not all of whom are theologians. The seminary serves to prepare the students for pastorships throughout Transylvania amongst the four Protestant denominations – the Reformed, the Unitarian, the Hungarian Evangelical-Lutheran, and the Saxon Evangelical-Lutheran. Women were recently allowed to attend the Seminary; however, despite this progressive move, it is generally understood that these women will eventually be the wives of pastors, not pastors themselves.
(Paul Menn, Bethany Woelk, Liz Yeager)
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