Religion in Romania

Romania's Christianity - Incursion into the past

Christianity arrived on the lands of today’s Romania at the same time with the Roman conquest of Dacia in AD 106, and in time, it outgrew the Geto-Dacian religion, who believed in Zamolxis and the immortality of the soul.

The oppression of Christianity came to an end in the 4th century, when Emperor Constantine proclaimed religious toleration throughout the Roman Empire. Due to its geographical position, and the access to the Black Sea, it was easier for the lands of Wallachia and Moldavia, to be influenced by the Greek Orthodox Church in Constantinople, rather than the Western Church in Rome.

During The Great Schism the Carpatho-Danubian area remained firmly Orthodox. After the diocese of Prima Justiniana was founded under the byzantine Emperor Justinian, in order to oversee the lands north of the Danube, the old Slavic language was adopted as a liturgical language.

Slavonic was gradually replaced by Romanian, though the Cyrillic characters were kept until second half of 18th century. The Romanian language became exclusive for the Romanian Orthodox Church only in 1863. With the formation of the Romanian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in the 14th century, Metropolitan sees were founded in Wallachia, at Curtea de Arges in 1359, and in Moldavia, at Suceava in 1401. The Turkish invasions of the Balkans have left their traces on the religious life as well. Phanariots were appointed to supervise in a more direct way the Orthodox Church, and also worked to bring the Romanians more under the Greek sphere of influence.

Moldavia managed to retain its independence a while longer, thanks to the efforts of Stephen the Great, and had closer contacts with Orthodox Russia. Even if the Ottomans controlled much of the region, they were tolerant with the Christian faith, and the population was not forced to convert to Islam. The unification of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia into one state, strengthened the local Orthodox Church, and in 1885 managed to be granted complete equal rights with the other Orthodox Churches.

In 1925, the Romanian Orthodox Church was raised at the rank of a Patriarchate, this religious event being the consequence of state unification on the 1st of December 1918. This was also due to the fact Romania adopted a new calendar, which was created to bring it more in line with the Gregorian Calendar used in West.

Romanian Orthodoxy and the Ceausescu Dictatorship

During the Ceausescu’s dictatorship, the church was tolerated partly because it was seen as a useful national tool. Heavy controls, infiltrations and a firm grip were held, though the churches remained open and well attended. The Orthodox Church was allowed to retain seminaries and centers of biblical and theological studies. Monasteries were the only places subjected to restrictions, in part because they were considered hotbeds of religious dissent. Throughout even the hardest periods of Communism, the Romanian Orthodox Church remained quiet, wanting to retain its limited autonomy.

Even if the Revolution had as one of the reasons, the persecution of the priest Laszlo Tokes, he was a Hungarian prelate of the Uniate Church. The religious minorities, including Catholics, were treated even more unjustly than the Orthodox Church, the Uniates being forced to assimilate either to Latin Catholicism or the Romanian Orthodox Church.

Due to the way the Orthodox Church was treated under the Ceausescu regime, it cast doubt in the eyes of many after the 1989 Revolution. Yet faith remained strong and Romanians, which continued to celebrate the church’s holidays and perform its rituals. Most of the status of the Orthodox Church was recovered in the recent years, and has won admiration for being one of the few Romanian institutions to lead a campaign to rid Romanian public life of former collaborators of the communist secret police. Romania remains still a very religious country and visitors are often surprised to see locals quickly making the cross sign while passing a church.

Catholics and Protestants of Romania

Transylvania, as a part of the Hungarian Kingdom, never fully went under the Ottoman rule, Roman Catholicism being integrated into the Magyar language and culture. From the middle of 16th century, during the Reformation that swept across Transylvania, a large numbers of the population converted to Protestant denominations – primarily Calvinists among the Hungarian community and Lutheran among the Saxons. Later on a significant Unitarian minority developed, notably among the Hungarian Szekely people.

These days the Lutheran churches catering for the Saxon minorities of Transylvania are in decline, mostly because the majority of the people have returned to Germany. Despite the fact that new evangelical denominations from Western Europe and the United States are making inroads, Romania remains a largely Orthodox country. According to the 2002 census, 86.7 percent of Romania’s total population identified themselves as Romanian Orthodox. The next largest group, Roman Catholics, comprise only 4.7 percent, while 0.9 percent of Romanians declare themselves to be Uniates. Except for the Reformed churches, no Protestant group comprises more than 1 percent of the population.

The Greek Catholics - Uniate Church

In the centuries earlier to Transylvania becoming a part of Romania (1920), its ethnic Romanians were a disadvantaged majority under Hungarian rule, and held onto their identity despite the determined efforts by Catholic missionaries to convert them. After 1683 when Transylvania was incorporated into the Hapsburg Empire, Rome encouraged the formation of the Uniate Church, which permitted the Orthodox/Slavonic rite but demanded recognition of the Pope as the head of the church.

Despite that this offered a way to a better social status of the Orthodox, most of the peasantry remained Romanian Orthodox. The Uniates were more successful in the higher ranks of society; however, this hybrid church has become a focus for the first stirrings of Romanian nationalism.

Romanian Religious Minorities

Romania’s history has left a variety of minorities. Some of them are rather small, such as the Jews, once very numerous, but killed during the Holocaust and then further reduced by large-scale emigrations to Israel. Other small minorities include Armenians and Muslim communitiesthe last remnants of Turkish domination, with their center in the city of Constanta. A unique minority is that of the Lipovani, or Russian Old Believers.

Persecuted by the Russian Emperors for their wish to keep ancient Russian traditions after a liturgical reformation in the middle of the 17th century, they emigrated to Romania from northern Russia and the Ukraine. Settled mainly in the Danube Delta they co-exist peacefully with the Romanian Culture.The majority of Romania’s Gypsies are Orthodox Christians, with a noticeable growth of membership in the independent Pentecostal churches, which seem to connect more easily to the Gypsies’ free lifestyle.

Today, Romania is a generally welcoming place for all religions, and takes an active role in ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue. It is the first eastern European Orthodox country to host both a visit from the Pope, in 1999, and a European Assembly of the World Council Churches (in Sibiu in 2007). On the other hand, a recent law approved by Traian Basescu requires religious denominations to include a minimum of 20,000 members before they can receive official recognition.