Orthodoxy and Reform in 1920s Romania

I have long had a soft spot in my heart for Romanian Orthodoxy. When I was heavily involved in the World Council of Churches in the 1990s, I had a colleague from Romania who became a friend. He gave me a lovely icon of the Theotokos, which still occupies pride of place on my desk at the university. He and I had a kind of sotto voce habit of dry and often sarcastic commentary on whatever dreary meeting we happened to be in, which was all of them. 

More recently, Romania utterly delighted me in January 2019 at the inaugural IOTA meeting where I was an official ecumenical observer and also gave a paper on papal reforms. We arrived the day after Christmas on the Julian calendar to find Iasi absolutely ablaze with decorations, which I utterly love. So it was a charming town in a country I had long wanted to visit, and it did not disappoint. (It is hard to resist thinking that even the shabbiest town in Europe--which Iasi was not by any means--is incomparably more lovely and interesting than the hideous suburban sprawl which defines just about any American city.)

All that is but preface to advise you of what sounds to be a fascinating new book by Roland Clark, Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania: The Limits of Orthodoxy and Nation-Building (Bloomsbury Academic, January 2021). 232pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

The Romanian Orthodox Church expanded significantly after the First World War, yet Neo-Protestantism and schismatic Orthodox movements such as Old Calendarism also grew exponentially during this period, terrifying church leaders who responded by sending missionary priests into the villages to combat sectarianism. Several lay renewal movements such as the Lord's Army and the Stork's Nest also appeared within the Orthodox Church, implicating large numbers of peasants and workers in tight-knit religious communities operating at the margins of Eastern Orthodoxy.

Bringing the history of the Orthodox Church into dialogue with sectarianism, heresy, grassroots religious organization and nation-building, Roland Clark explores how competing religious groups in interwar Romania responded to and emerged out of similar catalysts, including rising literacy rates, new religious practices and a newly empowered laity inspired by universal male suffrage and a growing civil society who took control of community organizing. He also analyses how Orthodox leaders used nationalism to attack sectarians as 'un-Romanian', whilst these groups remained indifferent to the claims the nation made on their souls.

Situated at the intersection of transnational history, religious history and the history of reading, Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania challenges us to rethink the one-sided narratives about modernity and religious conflict in interwar Eastern Europe.

Post-Communist Romanian Orthodoxy

The number of books treating post-communist religion and much else in Eastern Europe seems to have picked up pace again. Later this summer we shall have another: The Orthodox Church and National Identity in Post-Communist Romania by Adrian Velicu (Palgrave Macmillan, August 2020), 178pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

This book explores the Romanian Orthodox Church’s arguments on national identity to legitimize its own place in a post-communist Romania. The work traces the clergy’s deployment of the concepts of Christian Orthodoxy and Latin legacy as part of an uncharted constellation of arguments in contemporary intellectual history. A survey of public intellectuals’ opinions on national identity complements the Church’s views. The investigation attempts to offer an insight into the Church’s efforts to re-assert itself, given free rein in a post-dictatorial world of accelerated modernization. After clarifying and surveying the Church’s claims on institutional and national identity, the book then also explores the secular ideas on the subject. The subsequent analysis treats this material as “speech acts” (statements doing, not only saying, something) which are occasionally out of sync. Against a background of secularization, the Church’s rhetoric articulates a distinct line of thought in the post-89 intellectual landscape.

Orthodox Christian Renewal Movements

I well remember in the late 1990s there was a big gathering in Rome of what were then being called "new ecclesial movements" in the Latin Church that had grown up in the latter half of the twentieth century and were, in some cases, doing some unique things in new or different ways outside of the traditional episcopal-monastic models and lines of control. Some of these went on to flame out in spectacular ways, some still court controversy (e.g., Opus Dei, with which I have some limited experience in Canada in the 90s), and some seem to be continuing in their good work.

Renewal movements within Orthodoxy crop up periodically throughout its history, too, often in response to some revolutionary change. One thinks, e.g., of the brotherhood movements in what is today Ukraine after the Counter-Reformation and Union of Brest, or those that grew up around the Russian Revolution. More recently a series of movements and initiatives have arisen in post-Soviet Russia, Ukraine, Greece and elsewhere--again not all of them successful, and some, from what I have heard informally, downright pathological.

Along comes a new scholarly collection to give us an overview of some of these groups: Orthodox Christian Renewal Movements in Eastern Europe, eds., A.D. Milovanović and Radmila Radić, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 339pp.

About this collection (whose table of contents you can view here) the publisher tells us the following:

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.

T of C: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319633534

Justice and Redress in Romania

For two years and more now, here and elsewhere, I have been examining questions of historical memory and reconciliation in a variety of contexts using a variety of methods. In this I've returned to some themes that have long interested me in my ecumenical involvements over the last twenty-five years.

A recent publication, from two of the leading scholars of contemporary Romania, explores these questions anew: Justice, Memory and Redress in Romania: New Insights, eds. Lavinia Stan, Lucian Turcescu (Cambridge Scholars, 2017), 360pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Are there any lessons Romania can teach transitional justice scholars and practitioners? This book argues that important insights emerge when analyzing a country with a moderate record of coming to terms with its communist past. Taking a broad definition of transitional justice as their starting point, contributors provide fresh assessments of the history commission, court trials, public identifications of former communist perpetrators, commemorations, and unofficial artistic projects that seek to address and redress the legacies of communist human rights violations. Theoretical and practical questions regarding the continuity of state agencies, the sequencing of initiatives, their advantages and limitations, the reasons why some reckoning programs are enacted and others are not, and these measures’ efficacy in promoting truth and justice are answered throughout the volume. Contributors include seasoned scholars from Romania, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and current and former leaders of key Romanian transitional justice institutions.

Orthodox Renewal in Eastern and Southern Europe

It is of course a self-congratulatory staple of some Orthodox apologists that their tradition alone has not changed, while various Catholic and Protestant traditions have changed out of all recognition, becoming ever worse heretics in the process. Needless to say, this is a piece of myth-making that does not enjoy intimate congress with the historical evidence, some of which is newly recorded in a book released this month: Orthodox Christian Renewal Movements in Eastern Europe, eds. Aleksandra Djurić Milovanović and Radmila Radić (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 339pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

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.

For those who wish to pursue the questions of how and where Orthodox traditions have changed in the past century, I would also direct you to the fascinating collection I reviewed elsewhere, which has recently been released in a more affordable paperback edition:  Innovation in the Orthodox Christian Tradition?: The Question of Change in Greek Orthodox Thought and Practice, eds. Trine Stauning Willert and Lina Molokotos-Liederman (Routledge, 2017), 298pp.