Public Governance and Religion. Key Historical Turns in Modern Romania

To determine how intellectual debates on Church government, churchmanship, and Church engagement with nationhood, the secular state, and democracy may have a bearing on public governance and public policies is no easy task. Such an effect has largely gone unnoticed, as scholars were – and still are – accustomed to considering rather the different, and sometimes dramatic ways modern and contemporary statecraft influenced the position of the Church(es) in modern societies, as well as the various ecclesiological arguments brought forth by Church officials and theologians in order to explain, accept or reject this situation. It takes not only a firm command of both the social sciences and theology but also the courage to go beyond the prevalent methodological assumptions to argue that discussions among theologians and clergymen about internal Church affairs have changed modern politics and have helped reshape many a perspective on public administration or democratic government. Cătălin Raiu has both the required expertise and the audacity to venture out into this (as of yet) scientifically uncharted territory. Vast and barely traveled as it is, the territory mapped by Cătălin Raiu has however well-defined borders. It covers by and large the intertwined histories of the Romanian nation-state (from its formal inception in 1862 to the demise of the communist regime in 1989-1990) and of the Romanian Orthodox Church (from its establishment by the Romanian state in 1864 to its final disentanglement from any state control in 1990-1992). All along this chronological span, the Church acted in turn as a constituent part of civil society whose weight had to be taken into serious account by the successive political regimes (including the communist one) and as an interest group able to exert an effective influence on the public agenda (not only on issues related to its religious mission or the question of collective identity but also in administrative, financial and political matters). The Church acted sequentially and contingently as a pervasive part of civil society or as an organized and hierarchical interest group but was constantly and essentially both. It was at once an organic link between society and the state and an agency for promoting the specific interests of the clergy. It was always the state that decided which of these two indivisible figures of the Church had to take precedence at a given time.