Religion in Romania

Religious denominations in Romania according to the 2011 census,^[1] given as percentages of the total stable population.

  Romanian Orthodox (81.0%)

  Protestant (Reformed, Pentecostal, Baptist, Adventist, Unitarian, Lutheran and other Neoprotestant) (6.2%)

  Roman Catholic and Romanian Greek-Catholic (5.1%)

  Other religions (including other Christians, Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses and Jews) (1.2%)

  No religion or Atheist (0.2%)

  Missing Data (6.2%)

Romania is a secular state, and it has no state religion. However, an overwhelming majority of the country's citizens are Christian. 81.04% of the country's stable population identified as Eastern Orthodox in the 2011 census (see also: History of Christianity in Romania). Other Christian denominations include Roman Catholicism (4.33%), Calvinism (2.99%), Pentecostal denominations (1.80%) and the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church (0.75%). Romania also has a small but historically significant Muslim minority, concentrated in Dobrogea, who are mostly of Crimean Tatar and Turkish ethnicity and number around 64,000 people. According to the 2011 census data, there are also approximately 3,500 Jews, around 21,000 atheists and about 19,000 people not identifying with any religion. The 2011 census numbers are based on a stable population of 20,121,641 people and exclude a portion of about 6% due to unavailable data.^[1]

Religious denominations

Eastern Orthodoxy

Eastern Orthodoxy is the largest religious denomination in Romania, numbering 16,307,004 according to the 2011 census, or 81.04% of the population. The rate of church attendance is, however, significantly lower. According to a September–October 2007 poll, with respect to church attendance there are four categories in Romania (percentages relative to general population): 38% go to church several times a month or more (of which 7% go weekly or more often), 20% go to church on the average monthly, 33% go only one or two times a year, and 7% don't attend church.^[2]

Roman Catholicism

According to the 2011 census, there are 870,774 Roman Catholics in Romania, making up 4.33% of the population. The majority of Roman Catholics are of Hungarian ethnicity, even though there are also approximately 300,000 Catholics living mainly in the eastern region of Romania called Moldova, who are originally Csángó Hungarians rated as ethnic Romanians, as in many cases they identify themselves simply as Catholics instead of Csángó, Hungarian or Romanian.

Greek Catholicism

According to the 2011 census, there are 150,593 Greek-Catholics in Romania, making up 0.75% of the population.^[1] The majority of Greek-Catholics live in the northern part of Transylvania.

According to the information, valid for the end of 2003, given in the 2005 Annuario Pontificio, the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church then had 737,900 followers, many bishops, some 716 diocesan priests and 347 seminarians of its own rite. The dispute over the figure is included in the United States Department of State report on religious freedom in Romania.^[3] The Romanian Orthodox Church continues to claim many of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church's properties.

Protestantism

According to the 2011 census,^[1] Protestants make up 5.95% of the total population. The largest denominations included in this figure are the Reformed Church (2.99%) and the Pentecostals (1.80%). Others also included are Baptists (0.56%), Seventh-day Adventists (0.40%), Unitarians (0.29%), Plymouth Brethren (0.16%) and two Lutheran churches (0.13%), the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Romania (0.10%) and the Evangelical Church of Augustan Confession in Romania (0.03%). The former's adherents are mostly Hungarian whereas the latter's are German. The majority of Calvinists (Reformed Church) and Unitarians have their services in Hungarian.

Not to be confused with any of the above is the Evangelical Church of Romania (0.08%), an unrelated neoprotestant denomination.

Islam

Although the number of adherents of Islam is relatively small, Islam enjoys a 700 year tradition in Romania particularly in Northern Dobruja, a region on the Black Sea coast which was part of the Ottoman Empire for almost five centuries (ca. 1420-1878). According to the 2011 census, 64,337 people, approx. 0.3% of the total population, indicated that their religion was Islam.^[1] 97% of the Romanian Muslims are residents of the two counties forming Northern Dobruja: eighty-five percent live in Constanţa County, and twelve percent in Tulcea County.^[4] Since 2007, there are Indonesian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers coming to Romania, there are mostly Muslims

Other religions

Other denominations not listed above but recognised as official religions by the Romanian state are listed here. The Jehovah's Witnesses number around 50,000 adherents (0.25% of the stable population). Old Believers make up about 0.16% of the population with 30,000 adherents, who are mainly ethnic Russians living in the Danube Delta region.

Serbian Orthodox believers are present in the areas which border Serbia and number about 14,000 people.

Once fairly well represented in Romania, Judaism has fallen to around 3,500 adherents in 2011, which is about 0.02% of the population. Less still is the Armenian Christian minority, numbering about 400 people in total.

Lastly, the number of people who have identified with other religions than the ones explicitly mentioned in the 2011 census comes to a total of about 30,000 people.

Paganism

Neopagan groups have emerged in Romania over the latest decade, virtually all of them being ethno-pagan as in the other countries of Eastern Europe,^[5][6] although still small in comparison to other movements such as Ősmagyar Vallás in Hungary and Rodnovery in the Slavic countries.

The reconstructed ethnic religion of the Romanians is called Zalmoxianism^[5] and is based on Dacian and Thracian mythological sources, with prominence given to the figure of god Zalmoxis. One of the most prominent Zalmoxian groups is the Societatea Gebeleizis or "Gebeleizis Associstion".^[5]

Atheism and irreligion

Approximately 21,000 people have identified as atheists in Romania in the 2011 census and about 19,000 saw themselves as belonging to no religion at all.

Attitudes towards religion

In 2008, 19% of Romanians placed "Belief" among maximum four answers to the question "Among the following values, which one is most important in relation to your idea of happiness?". It is the third highest number, after Cyprus (27%), and Malta (26%), at equality with Turkey (19%). The mean in "Europe 27" was 9%.^[7]

In 2011 49% of Bucharesters declared that they only go to church on social occasions (weddings, Easter etc.) or not at all.^[8] According to preliminary data from the national 2011 census, 98.4% of the population declared themselves adherents of a religious denomination. This figure was contested,^[9] suggesting that the number of believers in disproportionately large. The final data for the 2011 national census shows a reduction of this figure to about 93.5% but includes a much larger portion of the population where religion-related data is missing (6.26%).^[1]

Charts

Charts
Geographical distribution of denominations  Romanian Orthodox Church organization  Eastern Orthodoxy in Romania (2002 census)  Roman Catholicism in Romania (2002 census)  Greek-Catholic presence (2002 census)[11]  Protestantism in Romania (2002 census)

See also

• Religion by country
• Religion in Europe
• Religious persecution in Communist Romania

Notes

References

• Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, Religion and Politics in Post-communist Romania, Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-19-530853-0
• Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, "Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania," in Quo Vadis Eastern Europe? Religion, State, Society and Inter-religious Dialogue after Communism, ed. by Ines A. Murzaku (Bologna, Italy: University of Bologna Press, 2009), pp. 221–235.
• Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, "Politics, National Symbols and the Romanian Orthodox Cathedral," Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 58, no. 7 (November 2006), pp. 1119–1139.
• Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, "Pulpits, Ballots and Party Cards: Religion and Elections in Romania," Religion, State and Society, vol. 33, no 4 (December 2005), pp. 347–366.
• Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, "The Devil's Confessors: Priests, Communists, Spies and Informers," East European Politics and Societies, vol. 19, no. 4 (November 2005), pp. 655–685.
• Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, "Religious Education in Romania," Communist and Post-Communist Studies, vol. 38, no. 3 (September 2005), pp. 381–401.
• Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, "Religion, Politics and Sexuality in Romania," Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 57, no. 2 (March 2005), pp. 291–310.
• Lavinia Stan and Lucian Turcescu, "The Romanian Orthodox Church and Post-Communist Democratization", Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 52, no. 8 (December 2000), pp. 1467–1488, republished in East European Perspectives, vol. 3, no. 4 (22 February 2001), available online at http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1342524.html, and vol. 3, no. 5 (7 March 2001), available online at http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1342525.html.
• Flora, Gavril; and Georgina Szilagyi, Victor Roudometof (April 2005). "Religion and national identity in post-communist Romania". Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans 7 (1): 35–55. doi:10.1080/14613190500036917.  Cite uses deprecated parameters (help)

v t e Principal religions of Romania State-recognised Romanian Orthodox Church (Ukrainian Orthodox Vicariate) Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Timişoara Roman Catholic Church (Armenian-Catholic Vicariate) Romanian Greek-Catholic Church Armenian Apostolic Church Lipovan Orthodox Old-Rite Church Reformed Church in Romania Evangelical Church of Augustan Confession Evangelical Lutheran Church Unitarian Church of Transylvania Baptist Union of Romania (Hungarian Baptist Convention) Christian Evangelical Evangelical Pentecostal Union of Romania Seventh-day Adventist Church Judaism Islam Jehovah's Witnesses Not state-recognised Old Calendar Romanian Orthodox Church Inochentism Hinduism