Clark , Roland Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania: The Limits of Orthodoxy and Nation-Building (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 581 attempts to get Maslow to New York, but he died suddenly in Havana, very likely murdered by Stalinist assassins. This is a well written and meticulously researched study about two tragic figures of the KPD. It tells the story of a couple inextricably linked by their political convictions and their shared fate, with their political careers culminating in a short period of leadership. Fischer (and Maslow) forced through the Bolshevization of the party only to find themselves amongst its first victims. One of the most intriguing parts of the story is Fischer’s political confusion after the murder of her partner. She wrote a book critical of German Communism that combined ‘the authenticity of an ex-communist […] with the same dogmatism and lack of nuance that she had displayed during her political life in the KPD’ (p. 191). She subsequently realized her mistake and reapproached Communism, and in doing so, showed herself to have been a far more complex figure than Maslow ever was. Leipzig University Udo Grashoff Clark, Roland. Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania: The Limits of Orthodoxy and Nation-Building. Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2021. ix + 222 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £85.00. Over the past decade, several important books have been published on religious renewal movements in the Balkans. One of these, Aleksandra Djurić Milovanović and Radmila Radić’s collected volume, Orthodox Christian Renewal Movements in Eastern Europe (Basingstoke, 2017) includes a chapter on the Lord’s Army in Romania by Corneliu Contantineanu. Although Constantineanu gives a thorough account of the formation and influence of the Lord’s Army, he does not explain how Protestant Pietist and Stundist ideas influenced Romanian Orthodox theologians such as Iosif Trifa (the founder of the Lord’s Army), and Dumitru Cornilescu and Tudor Popescu (the founders of the Stork’s Nest), all three of whom were Orthodox clergymen who fell out of favour with the Romanian Orthodox Church. Roland Clark’s new book sets out to fill this gap and to expand upon it by devoting an entire study to Romania’s religious renewal movements. To do so, Clark takes a major detour to explore the full panoply of religious life in 1920s Romania, and also the nationalism that was rampant in the country, especially after 1918, the year of the formation of Greater Romania, following the First World War. Thus he demonstrates how the Orthodox and (to a lesser degree) Greek Catholic Churches tried to monopolize nineteenth-century nationalism and use it SEER, 99, 3, JULY 2021 582 against their smaller competitors, alleging that these various denominations were not real Romanians but foreigners who engaged in anti-Romanian propaganda. The entire process of nation-building recognized, beyond the rhetoric of ‘us against them’, ‘a collection of diverse religious communities responding to rapid social change in different ways’. These social changes, Clark argues, included ‘rising literacy rates, new religious practices, new ways of engaging with Scripture, a newly empowered laity inspired by universal male suffrage, a growing civil society that was taking control of community organizing and the sudden expansion of the Romanian nation-state’ (p. 9). Clark applies to the Stork’s Nest and the Lord’s Army James Kapalo’s concept of ‘liminal Orthodoxy’ — forms of Orthodox Christianity suspended between Orthodoxy and other religious traditions — characterizing them as reform movements where the social tensions between the majority Orthodox Church and the so-called ‘Repenter’ denominations were experienced inside the Orthodox Church itself. Popular in 1920s Romania, the term ‘Repenter’ is a derogatory label widely used initially by the Orthodox to refer to evangelical groups such as Baptists, Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and so on, that ended up being adopted by these groups themselves. Rather than be driven by methodology, Clark focuses on contemporary details, drawing on a wide range of primary sources — sermons, pamphlets, newspapers and magazines — which enable him to delineate these various denominations, to expose their mutual hostility and reveal the scope of the competition between the majority Orthodox Church and these many smaller (some of them really tiny) groups. By detailing each group’s account of itself and their misrepresentation of others Clark brings them into lively conversation with each other...