Double or Nothing: Academic Theology and Post-Communist Religious Policy

Abstract

Church-state relations in post-communist Romania, as in other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, have received considerable attention over the past two decades from both scholars and activists, domestic as well as foreign. Issues of public interest included the dispute between the Orthodox and the Greek-rite Catholic churches over assets, the churches’ role in the criminalization of homosexuality, their position toward NATO integration and EU accession, the building of the “National” Orthodox Cathedral,1 the contents of religious education textbooks, and the involvement of clergy in local and national politics. Recently, the question of religious education has received prime time exposure when the widespread practice of displaying religious symbols in public schools was challenged in court. One topic that has remained off the radar of both human rights activists and students of religious affairs has been academic theology. In a sense, this is hardly surprising. The arcane pursuits of theologians cloistered in the country's universities seem remote from the mundane world of church-state entanglement, not to mention the foul trenches of partisan politics. In reality, as I will try to show below, the implications of the current structure of academic theology extend far beyond the field of higher education, deep into Romanian religious life in general.