NORTHAMPTON — After 15 years leading the congregation at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence, the Rev. Janet Bush will retire at the end of July.

Looking back on her time as a minister, Bush said a highlight had been the experience of providing sanctuary for an undocumented Russian immigrant.

“People would say it was transformative for us,” she said. “I think we learned a lot.”

Irida Kakhtiranova came to the U.S. in 2003 on a student visa. She overstayed her visa and became involved in a lesbian relationship before meeting and marrying an American man and having three children.

She was not threatened with deportation until the Trump administration started cracking down on immigrants. People required to check in every year with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to extend their stay in the U.S. were instead being summarily deported.

So the Unitarian Society, which had voted to become a sanctuary congregation in 2017, the next year brought Kakhtiranova to live in its basement. Her husband, 4-year-old twin girls and 10-year-old son came to visit from their home in Westfield.

“People drove the kids back and forth every weekend, and once or twice during the week,” Bush said. “Someone stayed with her every night. That and food were places we got a lot of help.

“We reached out to and collaborated much more substantively with other churches and religious groups, and partnered with the Pioneer Valley Workers Center.”

After three years in sanctuary, Kakhtiranova’s asylum case was reopened by the Board of Immigration Appeals and she was able leave the church.

During her time there, she started making pierogies and selling them at farmers markets and other Northampton outlets. She’s still fighting her case — and still making pierogies in the Unitarian Society’s basement, Bush said.

“We’re certified as a commercial kitchen,” she said.

Kakhtiranova’s experience was similar to that of Lucio Perez, a Guatemalan immigrant who found sanctuary at First Congregational Church in Amherst for three years.

Career switch

Bush came to Northampton after undergoing a midlife career change, entering Andover Newton Seminary after working for years on the business side of the biotech industry, even co-founding a company in the late 1980s.

“My minister talked me into it,” she said of her shift from commerce to congregation.

She had joined the Unitarian Universalists in 1992 and was engaged with her home congregation in Wellesley.

“The minister thought I had a lot of gifts, that I understood what congregational life was all about,” she said.

After graduating with a master’s in divinity from the seminary in 2008, she did an internship in Dorchester before being hired in Northampton.

“I was happy to stay in Massachusetts,” she said.

She found the community appealing, and she and her husband, Booker Bush, a primary care physician, moved to Florence. Dr. Bush works at Baystate’s High Street Health Center in Springfield.

Big tent

Unitarians come out of the Christian tradition, Bush said, but “we don’t consider ourselves Christian.” They formed in the early 19th century after splitting from the Congregational Church, which had a more conservative understanding of the Bible. Unitarians merged with Universalists, a more radical group, in 1961.

“We have a wide umbrella,” Bush said, covering atheists, Buddhists and many other belief systems.

Unitarian services include opening words, some ritual, and readings from various sources. Music and singing play a big part.

The Northampton and Florence congregation, located on Main Street next to City Hall, has about 220 members, Bush said.

“We have a really strong sense of a community living our beliefs,” she said, citing voter rights as one area of action.

“We’re mad post-carders here,” she said, sending out voting reminders to people in swing states, especially those who have faced obstacles to voting.

As it did for everyone, the COVID-19 pandemic caused upheaval. Bush said she was grateful to former governor Charlie Baker for including church staff on the list of essential employees.

“It made a huge difference in our ability to serve the congregation,” she said.

“We took care of each other, worked hard on finding ways for people to feel connected, conversation groups,” she said. “That was really important.”

Hybrid services are now routine, she noted.

Longtime member Cathy Lilly said the congregation, with Bush as minister, has grown in its commitment “to social action, particularly focused on climate justice, racial justice, voting rights and immigration justice.

“Our congregation is stronger after our shared ministry with her. She provided steady and inspired leadership for which we will always be grateful,” Lilly said in a statement.

The congregation expects to welcome a two-year interim minister while it conducts a search for a settled minister.

Bush said she will remain involved in the movement as a board member of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, which works on human rights issues, sometimes stepping in where there’s a humanitarian crisis, as in Haiti, she said.

But she said she hopes to follow some advice she was given recently on retirement — don’t make too many plans or commitments.

The Unitarian Society will hold a reception for Bush on June 15, followed by a surprise at the next day’s service.

“I haven’t ever gotten bored here,” Bush said. “It’s a wonderful place to live, a wonderful group of people.”

James Pentland can be reached at jpentland@gazettenet.com.