Volume 14 (2022): Edition 3 (December 2022)

History has shown a 20^th century marked by political, geopolitical, social, and economic metamorphosis, especially for the European continent. Romanian’s physical borders were reshaped during the first half of this century and caught between a political, social, and ethnic whirlwind. For Roma people, the 1920s and 1930s came with substantial turmoil as their efforts to establish various forms of representation and organization were not supported by the Romanian authorities, nor by public opinion. The public discourse was dominated by prejudice, stereotypes, and amplified marginalization. The far-right’s extreme tendencies, compounded by public discourse, spread Roma stereotypes such as “the thief”, “the other”, “the diseases carrier”, “the pariah”, “the unwanted” etc., and generated the idea of “us against them” which heavily impacted the deportation process.

This paper analyzes the way in which religion bolstered Roma people’s demands for civic emancipation and strengthened their ethnic and cultural identity in 1970s and 1980s Romania. Based on documents mainly from the former secret police, the Securitate, the paper is divided into two main parts. The “rst is a general overview of the state of the Roma people in communist Romania and the main initiatives for their civic emancipation. Next, the paper uses the perspective of “lived religion” to study three elements that informed the religious life of Roma during the 1970s and 1980s. These are the persistence of religious beliefs, the creation of Gypsy Neo-Protestant churches, and religious pilgrimage. Moreover, the paper will show that religious practice strengthened ethnic identity, favoured individual agency, and raised questions about equal rights and religious freedom.

After the fall of communist regime religion returned to play a significant role both in the public life and the research agenda in Romania. Admittedly disadvantaged by many factors, Romanian Roma intellectual elites addressed the topic as part of an effort to give voice to their ethnic group. Their writing back to the negative profiling of the ethnic group involved confrontation of the antigypsist narratives produced and shared by non-Roma academics, which reflected the power relations between the majority population and the Roma minority. Some of the narratives were articulated and culturally reproduced in religious terms. Like the other ethnic groups living in post-communist Romania, Romanian Roma intellectuals have not missed their chance to address religion as an element in the identity politics they take part in. In this paper, I examine the manners in which the first generation of post-communist Romanian Roma intellectuals addressed the religious profile and religious affiliation and/or affinities of their ethnic group. I will also try to highlight whether there are consonances or, on the contrary, dissonances between the Western Roma and Romanian Roma narratives in this matter.

The main concern of this article is to examine the conditions for Roma education through church and religious education. The program of the Holy Metropolis of Demetrias and Almyros “Agios Thaddeos” for the education of Roma is taken as a case study. This program belongs to the non-formal education sector. At the same time, the theological prerequisites of such programs by the Orthodox Church are examined in connection with the cultural identity of the Roma. The article concludes with an exploration of the conditions for the inclusion of Roma in formal education through religious education. The main purpose of Roma participation in religious education is religious literacy rather than catechism, as well as the preservation of their particular cultural identity. Emphasis is placed on the use of the tools of intercultural education and differentiated teaching in religious education based on the new curricula in Greece. In this way, formal and non-formal education are linked.

This article presents reflections on Roma inclusion in the context of intra-European mobility. It begins with accounts of visits to two religious actors running centres providing humanitarian assistance, social services, and opportunities to exercise religion to Roma and other migrants in Oslo, Norway: the Lutheran Church City Mission welcoming Roma migrants as guests in the City Mission Centre at Tøyen Church and the Pentecostal organisation Evangeliesenteret, where Roma migrants receive food and participate in religious gatherings at the Contact Centre. The article reflects on the modes of inclusion represented in these two accounts in relation to three different approaches to inclusion: EU Roma policy, the work of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, and diaconal theology. The article ends with reflections on what inclusion might mean in the context of intra-European Roma mobility.

Roma communities in Eastern Europe have long experienced socio-political and religious marginalization, a current phenomenon resulting from complex factors spanning over centuries. The rise of evangelical and Pentecostal movements among the Roma over the last decades have contributed to social uplift and more integration in certain contexts. However, societies in crisis are often an unexpected gauge to assess realities and tensions–in this case, the war in Ukraine and COVID-19 revealed the deep suspicion and prejudice still existing toward the Roma. Nonetheless, a number of Roma Pentecostals and Baptists became actively involved in responding to both crises. First placing the relationship between religion, society, and the Roma in historical context, this paper will explore how Christian Roma reacted to the dual crises and the implications for their relationship to the wider church and society,