The Ongoing Legacy of Communism in Romanian Christianity

The two editors of this volume, released last month, are very well known and respected in scholarly circles for their ongoing analysis of Romanian Christianity during and after communism. They have just published Church Reckoning with Communism in Post-1989 Romania, eds. Lucian Turcescu and Lavinia Stan (Lexington Books, 2021), 236pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The present volume focuses on the relationship with Communism of Romania's most important religious denominations and their attempt to cope with that difficult past which continues to cast an important shadow over their present. For the first time ever, this volume considers both the majority Romanian Orthodox Church and significant minority denominations such as the Roman and Greek Catholic Churches, the Reformed Church, the Hungarian Unitarian Church, and the Pentecostal Christian Denomination. It argues that no religious group escaped collaboration with the Communists. After 1989, however, most denominations had little desire to tackle their tainted past and make a clean start. In part, this situation was facilitated by the country's deficient legislation that did not encourage the pursuit of lustration, which in turn did not lead to a serious movement of elite renewal in the religious realm. Instead, a strong process of reproduction of the old elites and their adaptation to democracy has been the dominant characteristic of the post-Communist period.

Inochentism in Russian and Romanian Orthodoxy

I've only heard a couple of papers at conferences over the years about Inochentism, so I'm no expert, but it has always fascinated me. Now I can indulge in learning much more about this movement thanks to a new book by James A. Kapalo, Inochentism and Russian Orthodoxy: Religious Dissent in the Russian and Romanian Borderlands. of Resistance (Routledge, 2019), 296pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

This book explores the history and evolution of a controversial new religious movement that emerged in the Russian borderlands of Moldova and Ukraine in the context of the Russian revolutionary period. It centres around the charismatic preaching of Inochentie, a monk of the Orthodox Church, known to his followers as the ’Prophet of Fire’, who inspired an apocalyptic movement that was soon labelled heretical by the Orthodox Church and persecuted as politically subversive by Soviet state authorities. This book charts the emergence and development of Inochentism through the twentieth century based on oral testimonies, folk narratives and previously unstudied secret police and church archival material. Focusing on the role that religious persecution and social marginalization has played in the transformation of this understudied and much vilified group, the author explores a series of counter-narratives that challenge the mainstream historiography of the movement and highlight the significance of the concept of ’liminality’ in relation to the study of new religious movements and Orthodoxy. This book constitutes the first systematic study in the English language of an Eastern European ’home-grown’ religious movement taking a ’grass-roots’ ethnographic approach to the problem of minority religious identities in post-Socialist Eastern Europe.

Orthodox Christian Renewal Movements in Europe

Released at the beginning of this month is a fascinating-looking collection ranging widely over movements it is too easy to dismiss as composed of fanatics and freaks: Orthodox Christian Renewal Movements in Eastern Europe, eds., Aleksandra Djurić Milovanović and Radmila Radić (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 339pp.

About this book, which is a softcover reprint of the 2017 original, the publisher tells us this:

This book explores the changes underwent by the Orthodox Churches of Eastern and Southeastern Europe as they came into contact with modernity. The movements of religious renewal among Orthodox believers appeared almost simultaneously in different areas of Eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth and during the first decades of the twentieth century.

This volume examines what could be defined as renewal movement in Eastern Orthodox traditions. Some case studies include the God Worshippers in Serbia, religious fraternities in Bulgaria, the Zoe movement in Greece, the evangelical movement among Romanian Orthodox believers known as Oastea Domnului (The Lord’s Army), the Doukhobors in Russia, and the Maliovantsy in Ukraine. This volume provides a new understanding of processes of change in the spiritual landscape of Orthodox Christianity and various influences such as other non-Orthodox traditions, charismatic leaders, new religious practices and rituals.

Dumitru Staniloae's Ecumenical & Trinitarian Ecclesiology

Recently the international trilingual juried journal of which I am editor, Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, published an essay treating many of the same themes as that author has now developed at length in his new book: Dumitru Staniloae’s Trinitarian Ecclesiology: Orthodoxy and the Filioque by Viorel Coman (Fortress, 2019), 310pp.

Long-time readers of this blog will know that I think Staniloae one of the most important Orthodox theologians of the last century, and that Radu Bordeianu's book on him remains one of the most significant treatments in ecclesiology this century. (See my interview with Radu here.) It is good, then, that Staniloae continues to get much deserved attention from young scholars. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Dumitru Stăniloae is one of the most important but routinely neglected twentieth-century Orthodox theologians. Viorel Coman explores the ecumenical relevance of Stăniloae’s reflections on the interplay between the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the church in the context of the debates on the ecclesiological ramifications of the filioque. Coman combines a historical and theological analysis of Stăniloae’s approach to the filioque, Trinity, and church. The historical analysis shows the changes that have taken place over time in Stăniloae’s approach to the issue of the filioque and the doctrine of the church. The theological analysis emphasizes the ecumenical contribution of the Romanian thinker to the fields of Trinitarian theology and ecclesiology. Even though this book centers primarily around Stăniloae’s vision on the link between the doctrine of the Trinity and the Church, it places his theological reflections in a solid dialogue with other Eastern (Georges Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky, and John Zizioulas) and Western theologians (Karl Barth, Yves Congar, Karl Rahner, and Walter Kasper).

The Romanian Church and the Holocaust

Just released last month is a book that is sure to revive controversy over questions of collusion and assistance on the part of the Romanian Orthodox Church during World War II: Ion Popa, The Romanian Orthodox Church and the Holocaust (Indiana University Press, 2017), 226pp.

About this book we are told:

In 1930, about 750,000 Jews called Romania home. At the end of World War II, approximately half of them survived. Only recently, after the fall of Communism, have details of the history of the Holocaust in Romania come to light. Ion Popa explores this history by scrutinizing the role of the Romanian Orthodox Church from 1938 to the present day. Popa unveils and questions whitewashing myths that concealed the Church's role in supporting official antisemitic policies of the Romanian government. He analyzes the Church's relationship with the Jewish community in Romania and Judaism in general, as well as with the state of Israel, and discusses the extent to which the Church recognizes its part in the persecution and destruction of Romanian Jews. Popa's highly original analysis illuminates how the Church responded to accusations regarding its involvement in the Holocaust, the part it played in buttressing the wall of Holocaust denial, and how Holocaust memory has been shaped in Romania today.

Orthodox and Greek Catholics in Transylvania

Though some shriek in high dudgeon whenever the "Uniates" or "Greek" Catholics (or, better, Greco-Catholics) are mentioned, the fact is that Eastern Catholics have been bound up with other Eastern Christians from the very beginning, and treating them like lepers is, at the very least, liable to make for rather poor scholarship--to say nothing of ecumenical relations and basic Christian charity. Happily, a new book, from a Romanian Orthodox bishop and scholar, takes a wide and generous view in sketching history of Orthodox and Greek Catholic relations: Macarie Dragoi, Orthodox and Greek Catholics in Transylvania (1867-1916): Convergences and Divergences (SVS Press, 2015), 296pp.

About this book, the publisher tells us:

Orthodox and Greek Catholics in Transylvania (1867 1916): Convergences and Divergences, attempts to capitalize, as much as possible, upon both of the fundamental research methods and priorities of contemporary ecclesiastical history: documentary and interpretive. By opting not to treat the history of these two Romanian communities separately, but rather through the lens of their encounters whether peaceful or contentious this work intends to emphasize, as stated in the title, the convergences and the divergences in the ecclesiastical history of the Transylvanian Romanians between 1867 and 1916. This research aims to bring forth new contributions of a documentary kind by incorporating a wealth of archival information heretofore unknown in ecclesiastical historiography extracted from the documentary collections preserved by the National Archives in Transylvania, as well as in church archives, especially those in the Sibiu Archive of the Romanian Orthodox metropolitan see of Transylvania.

Romanian Orthodox Fascism

If we were all to be judged by the sins of our misbegotten youth, who would escape unscathed from the avenging tribunal of hindsight and history? And yet there are some forms of youthful "naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins" (Charles Ryder) more worthy of condemnation both at the time and later. A recent book takes a sustained look at the sins of Romania's Orthodox youth: Roland Clark, Holy Legionary Youth: Fascist Activism in Interwar Romania (Cornell UP, 2015), 288pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Founded in 1927, Romania’s Legion of the Archangel Michael was one of Europe’s largest and longest-lived fascist social movements. In Holy Legionary Youth, Roland Clark draws on oral histories, memoirs, and substantial research in the archives of the Romanian secret police to provide the most comprehensive account of the Legion in English to date. Clark approaches Romanian fascism by asking what membership in the Legion meant to young Romanian men and women. Viewing fascism “from below,” as a social category that had practical consequences for those who embraced it, he shows how the personal significance of fascism emerged out of Legionaries’ interactions with each other, the state, other political parties, families and friends, and fascist groups abroad. Official repression, fascist spectacle, and the frequency and nature of legionary activities changed a person’s everyday activities and relationships in profound ways.

Clark’s sweeping history traces fascist organizing in interwar Romania to nineteenth-century grassroots nationalist movements that demanded political independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It also shows how closely the movement was associated with the Romanian Orthodox Church and how the uniforms, marches, and rituals were inspired by the muscular, martial aesthetic of fascism elsewhere in Europe. Although antisemitism was a key feature of official fascist ideology, state violence against Legionaries rather than the extensive fascist violence against Jews had a far greater impact on how Romanians viewed the movement and their role in it. Approaching fascism in interwar Romania as an everyday practice, Holy Legionary Youth offers a new perspective on European fascism, highlighting how ordinary people “performed” fascism by working together to promote a unique and totalizing social identity.

Orthodoxy and Nationalism

I drew attention to this collection edited by Lucian Leustean, Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Southeastern Europe, when it was published last year, and it has since then sat accusingly on my desk. I've picked it up several times and started it over the last few months, but always some interruption or other took me away from it. Only this week had a chance to devote some time to it.

Let me say straightaway that anybody with any interest in the vexed question of Orthodoxy and nationalism--as well as the wider religio-political history of southeastern Europe over the last 150 years--cannot be without this book. The introductory chapter, which cogently sets forth an overview of forms and causes of nationalism and various scholarly theories and treatments of it, is itself worth the price of the book.

After that, the book devotes chapters to Greece, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, and the role of the Ecumenical Patriarch in the sunset of the Ottoman Empire and its millet system. The details unearthed considerably complicate conventional portraits about ethno-phyletism, the role of the French Revolution, and much else besides. This is a deeply fascinating book that has been smoothly edited.

Changing Religious Movements in Local and Global Perspective

For nearly two decades now we have been regularly hearing about the likely impact of "globalization" on everything from economies to churches, and it is indeed true that much has changed, not least thanks to technology that can bring, say, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or ISIS in Iraq, to much greater attention to a housewife in Boise than previously. Scholars continue to study the interplay between local actors and a global stage, as in this recent book which looks at Orthodox, Islamic, and other religious traditions: Robert W. Hefner et al, eds., Religions in Movement: The Local and the Global in Contemporary Faith Traditions (Routledge, 2013), 330pp.

About this book we are told:

There has long been a debate about implications of globalization for the survival of the world of sovereign nation-states, and the role of nationalism as both an agent of and a response to globalization. In contrast, until recently there has been much less debate about the fate of religion. ‘Globalization’ has been viewed as part of the rationalization process, which has already relegated religion to the dustbin of history, just as it threatens the nation, as the world moves toward a cosmopolitan ethics and politics. The chapters in this book, however, make the case for the salience and resilience of religion, often in conjunction with nationalism, in the contemporary world in several ways.
This bookhighlights the diverse ways in which religions first and foremost make use of the traditional power and communication channels available to them, like strategies of conversion, the preservation of traditional value systems, and the intertwining of religious and political power. Nevertheless, challenged by a more culturally and religiously diversified societies and by the growth of new religious sects, contemporary religions are also forced to let go of these well known strategies of preservation and formulate new ways of establishing their position in local contexts. This collection of essays by established and emerging scholars brings together theory-driven and empirically-based research and case-studies about the global and bottom-up strategies of religions and religious traditions in Europe and beyond to rethink their positions in their local communities and in the world.

The publisher also gives us the table of contents. Eastern Christians will be especially interested in chapters 2, 4, and 5:

General Introduction Sara Mels and Christiane Timmerman
PART 1: Global Perspectives on Religion and Politics 1. Introduction: Global Perspectives on Religion and Politics John Hutchinson 2. Islam, Politics and Globalisation: What are the Issues and Outcomes? Jeffrey Haynes 3. The Paradox of Globalisation: Quakers, Religious NGOs and the United Nations Jeremy Carrette 4. European Secularity and Religious Modernity in Russia and Eastern Europe: Focus on Orthodox Christianity Inna Naletova 5. The Orthodox Tradition in a Globalising World: The Case of the Romanian Orthodox Church Suna Gülfer Ihlamur-Öner 6. Good Muslims, Good Chinese: State Modernization Policies, Globalisation of Religious Networks and the Changing Hui Ethno-Religious Identification Maja Veselič 7. When National Histories and Colonial Myths Meet: ‘Histoire Croisée’ and Memory of the Moroccan-Berber Cultural Movement in the Netherlands Norah Karrouche 8. Self-Sacrifice and Martyrdom in Terrorism: Political and Religious Motives Francesco Marone

PART 2: Varieties of Religious Globalization 9. Introduction: Varieties of Religious Globalization Robert W. Hefner 10. Religion in the Contemporary Globalized World: Construction, Migration, Challenge, Diversity Peter Beyer 11. Voluntarism: Niche Markets Created by a Fissile Transnational Faith David Martin 12. Women perform ʾIjtihād: Hibridity as Creative Space for Interpretation of Islam Els Vanderwaeren 13. Processes of Localised and Globalised Islam Among Young Muslims in Berlin Synnøve Bendixsen 14. Towards Cultural Translation: Rethinking the Dynamics of Religious Pluralism and Globalization Through the Sathya Sai Movement Tulasi Srinivas 15. Ghanaian Films and Chiefs as Indicators of Religious Change Among the Akan in Kumasi and Its Migrants in Southeast Amsterdam Louise Müller