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The Romanian Orthodox Church expanded significantly after the First World War, yet Protestant Repenter and schismatic Orthodox movements such as Old Calendarism also grew exponentially during this period, terrifying church leaders who responded by sending missionary priests into the villages to combat sectarianism. Several lay renewal movements such as the Lord's Army and the Stork's Nest also appeared within the Orthodox Church, implicating large numbers of peasants and workers in tight-knit religious communities operating at the margins of Eastern Orthodoxy. Bringing the history of the Orthodox Church into dialogue with sectarianism, heresy, grassroots religious organization and nation-building, Roland Clark explores how competing religious groups in interwar Romania responded to and emerged out of similar catalysts, including rising literacy rates, new religious practices and a newly empowered laity inspired by universal male suffrage and a growing civil society who took control of community organizing. He also analyses how Orthodox leaders used nationalism to attack sectarians as 'un-Romanian', whilst these groups remained indifferent to the claims the nation made on their souls. Situated at the intersection of transnational history, religious history and the history of reading, Sectarianism and Renewal in 1920s Romania challenges us to rethink the one-sided narratives about modernity and religious conflict in interwar Eastern Europe. The ebook editions are available under a CC BY-NC 3.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the University of Liverpool.

Grigorie Pișculescu (1879–1961), better known by his literary pseudonym Gala Galaction, was one of the most prominent Romanian writers and church figures in the twentieth century. In his short stories, novels, and newspaper articles, Galaction developed an idiosyncratic style that integrated Eastern Orthodox themes and imagery into the lives of his characters, most of whom were peasants or working class. Unlike most religious writers in early-twentieth-century Romania, who were committed ultranationalists, even fascists, Galaction was a socialist who believed that defending the rights of the poor constituted a central Christian duty. As a result, he became valuable to the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) after the Second World War. Written over a 57-year period, his journal provides unique insights into major changes in Romanian religion, politics, and society that took place during the twentieth century. In these excerpts he writes about being courted—and manipulated—by the PCR because of his celebrity status.

This paper examines what it meant for individuals to identify themselves as protagonists of antisemitic social movements by tracing the creation of ultranationalist subjectivities in the context of a nationalising nation-state.

AbstractLarge numbers of Aromanian immigrants in Southern Dobruja joined the fascist Legion of the Archangel Michael during the early 1930s. Deterritorialised by population transfers and state-building in Greek Macedonia, they reterritorialised themselves as ethnic Romanians 'coming home' to colonise Southern Dobruja. This article situates the Aromanian turn to fascist politics within the problems they faced during migration. It argues that Aromanians used fascism to assert their identities as Romanians and to claim ethnic privileges that had been denied them as immigrants.