“Smuggling Bibles”: Everyday life of Baptist Serbs in Romania

Various neo-Protestant religious communities, such as Adventists, Pentecostals, Baptists, Nazarenes, Christian Brethren, and others, played an important role in the religious life of different ethnic groups in Romania, not only in the post-communist period, but also during communism. The establishment of the communist regime in Romania particularly influenced the position of minority religious communities, their rights of religious association, education, and employment.This paper seeks to present everyday life experiences of Baptist Serbs in Romania during the specific historical period of communism. It is based on field research conducted in August 2010 within Serbian Baptist communities located in the region of the Danube Gorge of western Romania (Rom. Clisura Dunãrii).Special interest is paid to the connections between Serbs from Romania and Yugoslavia, various missionary activities, and religious experiences of the born-again Christians during communism

“Converted Co-Ethnics”: Romanian Migrants in the Northern Serbian Province of Vojvodina

In this paper, my case study highlights Romanian neo-Protestant migrants from Serbia who either returned to their “home country,” or work on different missionary activities among their co-ethnics after the fall of communism. To a large degree, members of the Romanian minority in Serbia belong to the Romanian Orthodox Church, which is the dominant confession, then a smaller number to the Romanian Greek-Catholic church and various neo-Protestant communities, such as the Nazarene, the Adventist, the Baptist, and the Pentecostal community. Starting from the hypothesis that the conversion of the Romanians in Serbia to neo-Protestantism is closely related to issues of migration, whether the conversion occurred while living abroad or they were, for religious reasons, forced to leave the country, the focus of this paper is transformation of social relations among converted Romanians and their co-ethnics. Based on the results from ethnographic research conducted in Serbia in 2014–2015, I will focus on how migrants perceive themselves and their co-ethnic attitudes towards them. Becoming a part of transnational religious community and emphasizing supra-nationality, the Romanian neo-Protestants perceive themselves as a part of “worldwide brotherhood,” adopting some new forms of collective identity while distancing themselves from the Romanian Orthodox tradition. Thus, religious otherness raises questions of the attitude of the Romanian local community towards the Romanian neo-Protestant migrants and their new religious, cultural, and social practices

Miodrag Ciuruşchin, Political and Diplomatic Relations of Romania and Serbia between 1903 and 1914 [Relaţiile politico-diplomatice ale României cu Serbia în perioada 1903–1914]. Timisoara: Mirton, 2010, pp. 394.

Book Review: Miodrag Ciuruşchin, Political and Diplomatic Relations of Romania and Serbia in Period between 1903 and 1914 (Timisoara: Mirton, 2010, pp. 394