Ploscariu, Iemima (2021) A Dappled People: Jewish, Roma, and Romanian Evangelicals in Interwar Romania. Doctoral thesis, Dublin City University.
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Abstract
Following World War I, Baptists, Brethren, Pentecostals, and Seventh-day Adventists,were among the largest evangelical groups living in the territories of Transylvania, Bessarabia, and Bukovina, annexed to the Kingdom of Romania through the peace treaties. These religious minorities grew exponentially, first among ethnic minorities, and then among ethnic Romanians.Jewish and Roma minorities in Romania, already experiencing discrimination due to the expansion of racist and eugenic policies across Europe, forged ties with these denominations,which also suffered discrimination in the new Romania. Their diverse ethnic, class, and gender composition made them counter-cultural. Soon, these diverse evangelicals, who put faith above the nation, managed to establish themselves as influential religious minorities within Romania,enjoying strong ties with coreligionists abroad and ethnic minority coreligionists within the country. Romanian leaders perceived this evangelical minority as endangering the construction of a strong post-war national identity. The international and inter-ethnic connections of evangelicals threatened Romania’s territorial borders, state sovereignty, and the influence of the Romanian Orthodox Church, which was seen as a unifying institution central to Romanian national identity.By 1940, state authorities outlawed the non-conformist evangelical groups and deported some adherents to the ghettos in Transnistri a along with exiled Jews and Roma. Through the study of country-wide demographics, specific Jewish and Roma churches,their struggle through music for legitimacy and space, and their endurance during the Holocaust/Pojarmos, the lived religion of interwar Romanian evangelicals entangles assumptions of national identities and religion. These diverse groups enrich the current discourse on minorities in twentieth century Europe, through the way they challenged established religion and constructed new identities that crossed boundaries of language, gender, social class, and ethnicity.
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