Post-Secular Bucharest? the Politics of Space in the Case of the ‘Cathedral of National Redemption’

Sergiu Novac Post-secular Bucharest? The Politics of Space in the Case of the ‘Cathedral of National Redemption’ Zusammenfassung: Dieser Artikel setzt sich kritisch mit dem Begriff der ‚postsäkularen Stadt‘ am Beispiel des Bauprojekts für eine Patriarchenkathedrale in Bukarest ausein- ander. Im Folgenden wird herausgearbeitet, dass Bukarests ‚Postsäkularität‘ das Resul- tat einer sich verändernden politischen Machtkonfiguration zwischen der orthodoxen Kirche und dem rumänischen Staat ist. Diese Machtkonstellation hat direkten Einfluss auf die Gestaltung städtischen und öffentlichen Raums in Form eines offiziellen Narra- tivs, welches die Forderungen anderer städtischer Akteure nach Diversität im öffentli- chen Raum negiert. The idea that the world might be stepping into a ‘post-secular’ age and that religion is in the process of becoming public has caused a lot of debates among scholars in recent years. Not only does this imply that religion is given increasing importance in the public sphere and thus in the political field, too, but the post-secular thesis goes further and questions even the political arrangement of Western states, based on a secular modernity ideal. Well known authors such as Habermas (2006) and Taylor (2007) have started to speak of a ‘post-secular society’ and to experiment with the idea of a ‘post- secular turn’ (Habermas 2008, McLennan 2010), according to which religion has to be granted more attention in the public sphere than before. It is the purpose of the present article to critically engage with this debate and to contribute to the discussion by introducing a case study that reveals al- ternative interpretations of the post-secularism thesis. Within the broader understanding of ‘post-secularism’, indicating that “within secularized social structures of modern late capitalism, religions […] are very much present and will not disappear […]” (Beaumont in Molendijk, Beaumont and Jedan 2010: 6), I will focus on the re-emergence of religion in cities, because I share the opinion that using religion “as a distinct conceptual category in the relational conceptualization of urban diversity” (ibid.) can lead to novel results in the analysis of urban spaces. But even with respect to cities, the discussion has to be more detailed because the way in which religion becomes relevant does not follow a uniform pattern and does not always lead to urban diversity. Indeed, in most cases that have been studied in the recent academic literature (Baker and 82 Sergiu Novac Beaumont 2011), what is “qualitatively new […], that might be caught by the term ‘post-secularity’, lies in the processes of global mobility that result in the presence in all global cities of religious sub-populations who have not been shaped by the secularization formed by the cultural history that made the West ‘secular’.” (B. Martin in Molendijk, Beaumont and Jedan 2010: 63) This article will deal with a case in which the re-spiritualizing of urban space has very different reasons, where global mobility is not the only cause for a qualitatively new understanding of the city through the filter of religion. In contrast to the experiences of migration in the cities of the West, religion has re-emerged in Eastern European cities as an act of re-negotiating an already present tradition. Religion had not necessarily disappeared in Eastern Europe; however, what is meant here by re-emergence refers to an attempt of the established churches to become political and regain their influence in society after the fall of socialism. This implies the opposition of the global trend of privati- zation of religion and taking up a strong anti-secular stance (Hann 2000). Particularly in countries where Orthodox Christianity was the main religious denomination, re-politicizing religion after the fall of socialism was at- tempted by reconnecting it to the mythologies of the nation. The strong link between nationalism and Orthodoxy had already been present long before the modernist secularizing experiment of socialism. It can be argued that even during socialism, at least with regard to the Romanian case, the Orthodox Church did not lose its privileged position in relation to the state, although other religious denominations had to suffer repeated persecution (Stan and Turcescu 2007). After the collapse of socialism, this link was reinvented by the Orthodox Church, just as the trope of martyrdom was invented by trans- ferring the responsibility of all social evils to socialism and by portraying the Church as an anti-socialist national Messiah1. The condemnation of socialism by both the Romanian post-socialist governments and the Orthodox Church re-established the close ties between the two institutions, having direct con- sequences on the production and representations of urban space. Even if the relation between churches and the state during post-socialism has been ap- proached from a variety of disciplinary perspectives in different countries in the region (Hann 2000, Naumescu and Mahieu 2009, Papkova 2011, Stan and Turcescu 2007, Steinberg and Wanner 2008), it is my point of contention that the very important level of the city has been, with very few exceptions (see, for example Sidorov 2000), mostly ignored by the debate and needs further research. This article picks up this story for the Romanian case by looking at the most ambitious project of the Romanian Orthodox Church after the fall of so- 1 This leads to a theological question of redemption that the Orthodox Church is re- interpreting in post-socialism, according to which redemption is not possible on an indi- vidual level, but at the level of the entire nation (See Stan and Turcescu 2007, pp. 18-25). Post-secular Bucharest? 83 cialism: the construction of the patriarchal “Cathedral of National Redemp- tion”. The question mark in the title is explained first by the uncertainties in the concept of ‘post-secular’, an issue which has already been briefly pre- sented, but also by the fact that up to the moment of publication of the present article, the construction works for the cathedral have not started. It is still unclear whether the Romanian Orthodox Church will have the funds to build such an imposing structure, but what is clear is that after twenty years of conflicting claims over certain sites in Bucharest, the Church has finally settled the solution of building the cathedral next to the Romanian parliament. Whether or not the cathedral will be built is not very relevant for the main question of this article, because the negotiations behind the locations and the repeated claims for spaces in the city have actually fulfilled their scope of es- tablishing the position of the Church as a serious political player, powerful enough to shape the city in an important manner. The first section of this article will give a short historical overview of the connection between Orthodox churches and nation-building in Eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century and then focus on the particular story of Bucharest. It will be argued that the project for a patriarchal Ortho- dox cathedral in Bucharest is not an idea that has gained contour after the fall of socialism, but goes back as far as the modern Romanian state. The second and the third section will be ‘archaeologies’ of two sites in Bucharest, sites that have been very important in the cathedral debate after the fall of socialism: Carol Park and the Civic Center. Both are important for the discussion of the connection between religion and the city, because they reveal two different aspects of the story. One site reveals the relation between nationalism and religion, which manifests itself in a struggle with conflicting claims over public monuments located in Bucharest. The other site is important because of the relation of religion to socialism, which it reveals from the perspective of the built environment. It is somehow ironic that the faith of the Civic Cen- ter of Bucharest, the reference point in terms of ‘high modernist’ (Scott 1998) urban planning schemes in Romanian socialism2, will be sealed by adding a grand patriarchal cathedral to the already existing complex of monumental buildings of the state administration. Before going on with the first section it might be important to note that I do not perceive the ‘Orthodox Church’ or ‘the state’ as monolithic actors, but as institutions that have conflicting internal power dynamics and diverging interests. At the same time, these two collective actors are not alone in the political field, be it at the urban, national or global level, but have to interact and negotiate with other secular and religious actors. It is not only the cathedral project that makes up for Bucharest’s candidacy for post-secularity, but also numerous other religious construction projects, like smaller parish 2 See Section 3 for details. 84 Sergiu Novac churches, houses of worship, theological institutes or public shrines belong- ing to different religious cults. However, I argue that in contrast to other religious cults that negotiate their relation to the state in post-socialism, the case of the Orthodox Church stands out, due to the fact that it claims a privileged position as a ‘national’ church in its relation to the state, a claim it has suc- cessfully consolidated during post-socialism. 1. A Cathedral for Every Capital There is a long tradition of shared responsibility in exerting power between the secular and the religious authority in Orthodox Christianity. The notion of symphonia in the Byzantine Empire stood for a very close interconnectedness between the Patriarch and the Emperor, ideally even for the overlapping of the two functions (see Papadakis in Ramet 1988). By the end of the 19th century, the political environment in Eastern Europe had substantially changed due to the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, and most emerging nations in the region turned to religion in their self-identifying endeavors.

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