Table Of ContentMODERNITY, MEMORY AND
IDENTITY IN SOUTH-EAST EUROPE
The Orthodox Church and
National Identity in Post-
Communist Romania
Adrian Velicu
Modernity, Memory and Identity
in South-East Europe
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Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies
University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen, Denmark
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Adrian Velicu
The Orthodox
Church and National
Identity in
Post- Communist
Romania
Adrian Velicu
University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen S, Denmark
ISSN 2523-7985 ISSN 2523-7993 (electronic)
Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe
ISBN 978-3-030-48426-2 ISBN 978-3-030-48427-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48427-9
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A
cknowledgements
I would like to thank Professor Catharina Raduvere of the University of
Copenhagen for encouraging me to embark on this project. Professor
Raudvere has provided helpful comments on the text as have a number of
anonymous readers at various stages of the work. I have benefited from
Marie-Louise Karttunen’s numerous suggestions for stylistic improve-
ments. I would also like to thank Christine Pardue for editorial support
at Palgrave Macmillan. Thanks are due to the staff of the Library of the
Romanian Academy, the Romanian National Library, the Library of the
Holy Synod in Bucharest and the British Library. I am grateful for access
to the electronic resources of the University of Copenhagen Library.
This work has been produced within the framework of the University
of Copenhagen research centre Many Roads in Modernity, generously
funded by the Carlsberg Foundation.
v
c
ontents
1 I ntroductory Matters 1
2 A Resurgent Church 39
3 A Rampant Church 75
4 Secular Counterpoint 105
5 Undercurrents of Identity Discourse 137
6 In Search of a Conclusion 161
Index 167
vii
CHAPTER 1
Introductory Matters
On 15 January 2016, the patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church
addressed the members of the Romanian Academy. The occasion was
National Culture Day; the theme that year was national identity. Patriarch
Daniel, an honorary member of the Academy, highlighted the Christian
Orthodox contribution to the Romanian national identity as one of the
two chief components of a synthesis, the other being the Latin origin of
the Romanian language with its presumed ethnic and cultural legacy. The
speaker reminded his audience that this identity has emerged as a synthesis
between East and West, between an Orthodox view of spiritual mystery
and Latin intellectual clarity, as the theologian Dumitru Stǎniloae has
put it, an idea quoted approvingly in the speech (http://patriarhia.ro/
ziua-culturii-nationale-la-academia-romana-8558.html; Stǎniloae 2014,
pp. 112–114). By way of summing up, this pithy allocution quoted
Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople’s admiration for the fact that
the Romanian people has preserved its Orthodox faith and Latin-based
language.
The nature of the speech and the occasion are significant for the present
enquiry. The head of the Orthodox Church, the largest religious institu-
tion in Romania, addresses the members of the principal learned body
in the land and reinforces his conclusion by resorting to the authority of
the oldest Christian institution, the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Within this institutional framework, the address invokes complex
© The Author(s) 2020 1
A. Velicu, The Orthodox Church and National Identity in Post-Communist
Romania, Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48427-9_1
2 A. VELICU
notions—identity, culture, nation—without necessarily attempting to
convince the audience through prolonged arguments, confident that a
shared cultural memory would bring together religious and secular views
on the subject.
Before the collapse of the communist regime in Romania in December
1989, the closest the previous patriarch came to addressing a public insti-
tution was to send an official telegram to Nicolae Ceause̦ scu, the leader of
the Communist Party, congratulating him on being re-elected as First
Secretary at the 14th Congress of the Party. Prior to the political reversal
of 1989, the patriarch refrained from enlightening the Party Leader on the
place of Orthodoxy within the identity of the Romanian people; after the
political reversal, however, the higher clergy could freely expound on the
matter. Lack of censorship, a visible place in public life and increased
resources ensured that, after the collapse of the communist dictatorship,
the Orthodox Church could assert itself anew, both institutionally and
intellectually. This revival stimulated a return to a view of national identity
based on the Latin legacy and Orthodox Christianity, resurrecting ideas
articulated before the communist takeover in the late 1940s.
Such ideas are to be found in works on the concept of Romanian
national identity published throughout the twentieth century, which are
referenced in the footnotes of the patriarch’s address (included in the
published text); clearly, the prelate’s survey indicates the relevance of an
intellectual historical approach. Most of these writers are lay scholars
willing to admit the importance of Christian Orthodoxy—or at least a
spiritual dimension derived thereof—to the national identity. Moreover,
by tracing the ideas of these sociologists, historians, philosophers and
literary critics, which were relevant to the occasion, it appears that the
patriarch is willing to consider the concepts of identity and culture in an
interdisciplinary context that stretches beyond the theological framework.
Thus, the post-1989 revival of the institution as well as its resumption of
a strand of thought featuring identity and Orthodoxy have occasioned a
series of arguments and counter-arguments in need of exploration. The
dynamics of these currents, cross-currents and, indeed, undercurrents of
opinion lend themselves to an approach derived from intellectual history.
This is the kind of enquiry undertaken in the present work.
1 INTRODUCTORY MATTERS 3
Preliminary ClarifiCations
Two decades after the collapse of communism, scholars have pointed out
that the “intellectual history of post-socialism” has dealt mainly with the
“transnational level,” leading to a “discrepancy” and risking “misunder-
standing” between scholars examining international and local contexts
(Kopeček and Wciślik 2010, pp. 14–15). The present investigation con-
tributes to remedying this state of affairs, as one of its main aims is to
examine how an institution such as the Romanian Orthodox Church,
given free rein after the collapse of Communism, has developed and
employed a discourse of national identity. Such a discourse points to ways
in which a religious institution may adapt to the accelerated type of moder-
nity unleashed in former Eastern European dictatorships. Hence, the
study also considers a secular counter-discourse regarding the Church’s
specific claims about national identity, which offers a complementary per-
spective. The concept of identity appears in combinations where other
concepts such as culture or nation are also present. As various parties—
clergymen, historians, philosophers, public intellectuals, journalists, politi-
cians—reflect on such conceptual constellations, they seek suitable notions
to serve as evidence to justify particular interests or reinforce particular
views. The focus is on the selective use of past arguments, current con-
cepts and tropes in the fluid post-communist Romanian context, which,
taken together, amount to an intellectual landscape in need of scrutiny.
More specifically, the analysis in this book considers three claims: what
the authors say that they know about Romanian cultural identity; what
they claim that it actually is; and the course of action that ought to be
pursued in consequence. This approach alludes to the three general fields
of philosophy—epistemology, ontology and ethics—without necessarily
turning the work into a philosophical treatise. The categorization, how-
ever, provides a supplementary tool that brings order, when needed, to a
multitude of opinions that appear either awkwardly disparate or superfi-
cially similar. In so far as the Orthodox Church insists on presenting itself
as a component and force within the Romanian cultural and national iden-
tity, the same kind of scrutiny applies to the institution: what does the
Church claim that the world should know about it, what does the Church
claim that it is and, still as part of its self-narrative, how does the Church
reflect on its present and past actions, including those during the
Communist dictatorship?
