Jehovah's Witnesses Association of Romania

A Kingdom Hall in Târgovişte.

Jehovah's Witnesses Association of Romania (Romanian: Organizaţia Religioasă "Martorii lui Iehova" din România) is the formal name used by Jehovah's Witnesses for their operations in Romania, with a branch office located in Bucharest. It is one of eighteen officially recognised religious denominations in the country. According to the organisation, it has 38,000 adherents as of 2008. Each congregation is supervised by a group of elders appointed by the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses. The magazines The Watchtower and Awake! are both published in Romanian.^[1]

History

Bible Student groups first appeared in present-day Romania through Hungarian missionaries in Transylvania.^[2] These were also active in the Romanian Old Kingdom prior to World War I, and there remain groups under the "Bible Student" name in Romania today. In 1920, Ioan B. Sima, a former Greek-Catholic, was sent from the United States to organise the community, which was divided into four groups in the 1930s.^[2] Following a leadership dispute in the Bible Student movement in the United States, those who remained associated with the Watch Tower Society became known as Jehovah's witnesses in 1931.^[1]

During the interwar period of Greater Romania the government imposed successive bans on the group's operations. In one piece of legislation passed in 1937 by the Gheorghe Tătărescu cabinet, they were defined as one of the "religious associations and sects" whose activity on Romanian soil was prohibited; the list also included the Pentecostals, the Apostolic Faith Church of God, the Nazarenes, the Old Calendar Orthodox, the Inochentist church and Bible societies.^[3] As a result of their conscientious objection, Jehovah's Witnesses were persecuted during World War II under the Ion Antonescu regime.^[4]

In 1945–46, the Witnesses were permitted to openly publish their literature in Romanian; however, in 1948, their operations were again banned when the new Romanian Communist regime excluded them from its list of official religious communities.^[2] The group presented forthright critiques of ecclesiastical, social and political institutions, as well as apocalyptic pronouncements that were considered subversive by the Communist regime. Even more than their radical millenarianism, their opposition to military service and what officials understood as the Witnesses' attitude to the Romanian state were also considered unacceptable. Stories claiming that Jehovah's Witnesses were prepared to become personally involved in overcoming the powers of darkness and to bring to a consummation the climactic eschatological moment were circulated, increasing pressure on the group.^[5]

Officials maintained close surveillance of the Witness community, subjected its members to intense harassment and discrimination, and deprived them of their civil rights on various occasions. The media and other methods were also employed against the Witnesses. Religious scholar Earl A. Pope cites an American report which stated that in 1975 there were "heavy persecutions" in a number of major cities, including brutal beatings, continuous questioning in excess of fifty hours at a time, and physical torture, as well as many hundreds of house searches throughout the country and seizure of religious literature. The Governing Body tried to negotiate with the Romanian government, but their communications were unanswered. No precise figures are available as to the size of the movement under Communism, but it was large enough to create considerable apprehension for officials.^[2] According to British political scientist Tom Gallagher, by the 1980s, one source of converts to the Witnesses, as well as to Protestant denominations, was the new working class housed in urban high-rise settlements, as the Orthodox hierarchy was reluctant to take care of this group's religious needs.^[6] In an interview with the World Council of Churches' official magazine, Metropolitan Antonie Plămădeală of the dominant Romanian Orthodox Church said that gaining official recognition would have been very difficult for Jehovah's Witnesses in Romania because of their attitude toward the Communist state and to military service, but it would not have been impossible if the state had better understood their views and been less paranoid. He claimed that if they kept a low profile and were not active against the state, the authorities would be unconcerned about them. ^[2]

Following the Romanian Revolution of 1989, Jehovah's Witnesses in Romania received legal status as a religious association in 1990. Since then, opposition has come from the Orthodox Church, which considers the group to be a heretical sect that employs "aggressive proselytism". In July 1996, the Orthodox Church influenced the authorities to cancel a planned international convention of Jehovah's Witnesses that had been scheduled to take place in Bucharest in July 1996.^[7] Pursuant to a ruling by the Supreme Court of Justice in 2000, the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs granted the group official recognition in 2003,^[1] the first denomination to be recognised since the aftermath of the Revolution.^[8]

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c} (Romanian) "Organizaţia Religioasă 'Martorii Lui Iehova'" ("The Jehovah's Witnesses Religious Body"), at the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs, Under-Secretariat for Culture and Religious Affairs; accessed July 6, 2010
2. ^ ^{a b c d e} Pope, p.190
3. ^ (Romanian) "Interzicerea sectelor şi asociaţiilor religioase" ("The Banning of Sects and Religious Associations"), in Vestitorul, Nr. 17-18/1937, p.165 (digitized by the Babeş-Bolyai University Transsylvanica Online Library)
4. ^ "Jehovah's Witnesses in East Central, South Eastern and Southern Europe. The Fate of a Religious Minority (book reviews)", in LIT Verlag's Religion-Staat-Gesellschaft, 1/2007
5. ^ Pope, p.189-90
6. ^ Gallagher, p.65
7. ^ Human Rights Watch World Report 1997: Events of 1996, Human Rights Watch, 1996, p.230. ISBN 1-5643-2207-6; (Romanian) Mirela Corlăţan, "Martorii lui Iehova au intrat în legalitate" ("Jehovah's Witnesses Legalised"), in Ziarul de Iaşi, June 20, 2003; Ramet, p.289
8. ^ "Romania", International Religious Freedom Report 2005, United States Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

References

• Tom Gallagher, Modern Romania: The End of Communism, the Failure of Democratic Reform, and the Theft of a Nation, NYU Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8147-3172-4
• Earl A. Pope, "Protestantism in Romania", in Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.), Christianity under Stress. Vol. III: Protestantism and Politics in Eastern Europe and Russia: The Communist and Postcommunist Eras, Duke University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-8223-1241-7
• Sabrina P. Ramet, "Church and State in Romania", in Henry F. Carey (ed.), Romania since 1989: Politics, Economics, and Society, Lexington Books, 2004. ISBN 0-7391-0592-2