Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania RELIGION and GLOBAL POLITICS SERIES

Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania RELIGION AND GLOBAL POLITICS SERIES Series Editor John L. Esposito University Professor and Director Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding Georgetown University Islamic Leviathan Islam and the Making of State Power Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr Rachid Ghannouchi A Democrat within Islamism Azzam S. Tamimi Balkan Idols Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States Vjekoslav Perica Islamic Political Identity in Turkey M. Hakan Yavuz Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania lavinia stan lucian turcescu 1 2007 3 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright # 2007 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stan, Lavinia. Religion and politics in post-communist Romania / Lavinia Stan, Lucian Turcescu. p. cm.—(Religion and global politics series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-530853-2 1. Church and state—Biserica Ortodoxa Romaˆna—History—20th century. 2. Church and state—Romania—History—20th century. 3. Biserica Ortodoxa Romaˆna—History—20th century. 4. Biserica Ortodoxa Romaˆna—Doctrines. 5. Orthodox Eastern Church—Doctrines. 6. Romania—Politics and government—1989– I. Turcescu, Lucian. II. Title. BX698.S73 2007 322'.10949809049—dc22 2006037206 987654321 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To our son Luc Edward This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments In the mid 1990s when we were searching for a topic of common interest, religion and politics came to mind naturally. A trained theologian, Turcescu has had a keen interest in politics, whereas Stan once toyed with the idea of enrolling in a theology program. During the last twenty-two years we have engaged in lengthy discussions, passionate debates, and heated arguments over a number of general topics, including the appropriate boundaries between religion and politics. This volume comes almost a decade after we started exploring religion and politics together, and after several articles and book chapters written in collaboration on the general topic of religion and politics in post-communist Romania. While readers are the final judges of the quality of our work, we believe that this volume would have been impossible to write by either author working in isolation. By working together, we complemented our sources of information, criticized our points of view, and expanded our mutual understanding of the general topic. It has certainly been a rocky and often ad- venturous journey, but we both learned a great deal from it. Research for this volume was undertaken with the generous support of a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada standard research grant that has covered multiple trips to Romania in order to conduct indispensable personal interviews with religious leaders, academics, writers and journalists, government officials and regular faithful. We thank everybody in Bucharest, Iasi, Timisoara, Pitesti, Constanta, and Cluj who agreed to talk to us viii acknowledgments about what remains a highly sensitive and often controversial topic in that country. Gabriel Andreescu, Liviu Andreescu, Gabriel Catalan, Ioan Sebastian Chesches, Dorin Dobrincu, Stephanie Mahieu, Irimie Marga, Justina Sora, Sabina Stan, Laurentiu Tanase, Cristian Vasile, Rodica Milena, and Razvan Zaharia made valuable material available to us. Norm Seymour commented on our discussion of sexuality, Christopher Snook proofread some chapters, and Adriana Bara did some copyediting and helped with the bibliography. A number of anonymous reviewers offered constructive criticism. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments on the project, and especially Cynthia Read and Julia TerMaat of Oxford University Press for their patience and support in having this book published. This is the first volume on Ro- manian politics the press has published since Ghita Ionescu’s Communism in Romania, 1944–1962 (1964), and we hope it matches Ionescu’s high standards of scholarship. Above all, Sabrina P. Ramet deserves warm thanks for helping us improve the quality of the arguments, for agreeing to write the foreword, and for extending a helpful hand and an encouraging word in times of need. The remaining weaknesses are all ours. Parts of chapter 3 were published in Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, ‘‘Church-State Conflict in Moldova: The Bessarabian Metropolitanate,’’ Com- munist and Post-Communist Studies 36, no. 4 (2003): 443–465. The copyright of that version vests in the Regents of the University of California, and it is used here with permission. Other parts draw on Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, ‘‘Politics, National Symbols and the Romanian National Cathedral,’’ Europe- Asia Studies 58, no. 3 (2006): 1119–1139. Used here with permission. An earlier version of chapter 4 was published as Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, ‘‘The Devil’s Confessors: Priests, Communists, Spies and In- formers,’’ East European Politics and Societies 19, no. 4 (Nov. 2005): 655–685, copyright 2005 by American Council of Learned Societies. Reprinted by permission of the American Council of Learned Societies and Sage Publications. An earlier version of chapter 6 was published as Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, ‘‘Pulpits, Ballots, and Party Cards: Religion and Elections in Ro- mania,’’ Religion, State and Society 33, no. 4 (2005): 347–366. It is used here with permission from Taylor and Francis. An earlier version of chapter 7 was published as Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, ‘‘Religious Education in Romania,’’ Communist and Post-Communist Studies 38, no. 3 (2005): 381–401. The copyright of that version vests in the Regents of the University of California, and it is used here with permission. An earlier version of chapter 8 was published as Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, ‘‘Religion, Politics and Sexuality in Romania,’’ Europe-Asia Studies 57, no. 2 (2005): 291–310. It is used here with permission. Contents Foreword by Sabrina P. Ramet, xi 1. Religion and Politics in Post-Communism, 3 2. Competing Models of Church-State Relations, 17 3. Religion and Nationalism, 41 4. Confronting the Communist Past, 65 5. The Politics of Orthodox-Greek Catholic Relations, 91 6. Religion and Elections, 119 7. Religious Education in Public Schools, 145 8. Religion, Politics, and Sexuality, 171 9. Religion, Democratization, and European Union Enlargement, 199 Appendix, 209 Notes, 211 Bibliography, 241 Index, 263 This page intentionally left blank Foreword Sabrina P. Ramet It is a great honor for me to introduce this exciting new book written by Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu about the Romanian Orthodox Church and its politics. They bring a fresh perspective to the subject, arguing that strict church-state separation is not an appropriate model for Romania and that, in any event, such separation ‘‘is not essential to democracy.’’ Moreover, where others have dwelled at length on the vast changes which followed the collapse of communism throughout the Central and East European area in the course of 1989–90, they look at both continuity and discontinuity of the principles and institutions in religious policy and in the religious sphere over time. As they note, the post-communist transition offered an opportunity for Romania to redefine itself, and, within that context, to redefine its religio-political formula. Stan and Turcescu allow us, as it were, to look behind closed doors. Indeed, they are uniquely qualified to write this book, bringing to the task training in theology (Turcescu) and in political science (Stan), as well as personal experience related to the subject of this book. Both of them spent about a quarter of a century living in Romania, both of them were under police surveillance, both of them had earned higher degrees by the time they left Romania, both of them changed fields of study. Stan began in economics, earning a bachelor’s in commerce at the Academy of Economic Sciences in Bucharest before crossing over, after emigrating to Canada, to political xii foreword science. Turcescu began as a student of computer sciences in Bucharest, but abandoned that course of study to switch to theology—at the risk of being labeled a ‘‘social parasite.’’ Indeed, Turcescu’s change of career path involved quite serious risk; every school of theology had a Securitate (secret police) officer assigned to it, and he was certain that the Securitate were keeping files on all students of theology. At the Faculty of Theology in Sibiu, where Turcescu began his theological studies before transferring to the faculty in Bucharest, the professors were urging their students not to go to restaurants or public places and talk to people about Christianity; Christian faith was to be treated, rather, as something very private, as something potentially dangerous. Stan came under suspicion when her mother defected to Canada in 1988 and Stan herself was branded an ‘‘enemy of the state.’’ Indeed, the secret police file kept on Stan eventually amounted to 100 pages of reports and notes, which, by Romanian standards, was by no means a thin file. Although she did not engage in any dissident activity such as political pamphleteering, local people would routinely spy on each other, and calling someone’s political reliability into question was sometimes seen as a route to a promotion.

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