The study presents the analysis of identity narratives belonging to neo-pagan groups, a groupphenomenon which is nowadays widely researched. The author considers highly exciting the statement which claims that the neo-paganism has a specific Hungarian branch, which may present interesting trends regarding political preferences, religious and national identity interwovencies. Her initial point is that communities respond to the postmodern existence with a negative attitude in which they try to form a general and overall valid self-definition; in other words they try to alloy the national, the linguistic, the religious and possibly the political identity forms in a credible, authentic unit; furthermore these movements in some aspects act in such a way like the ethnicity would be their shaping principle. This does not mean that this is the way the whole society considers them, but on the contrary, the researched entities in many situations react to the world surrounding them like minorities do, from which they do not necessarily differ ethnically. The concluding part of the study consists of the qualitative analysis of two organs in which the neo-pagan meta-culture is coupled with a specific identity-culture.
Réka Szilárdi finished her studies at the University of Szeged, Faculty of Arts, Hungarian language and Literature and Religion. At present she is doing her PhD studies in Social Psychology at the University of Pécs, and she works in the Department of Religion at the University of Szeged. Her main fields of interest are: neo-pagan meta-narratives, religious elements in science fiction. E-mail address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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The study focuses on the 21st century practices of religion of a traditionally religious community. The study was carried out in a small town in Székely Land, Miercurea Ciuc or Csíkszereda, where the social changes are rather slow compared to the centres, however the religious changes are marked by the territory’s homogenous and outstanding religious character. The study offers a brief theoretical review of the causes of the social changes in the religious practices, after that presents the town’s external-premodern and internal-modern religious practitioners.

Ildikó Fejes is a sociologist and a religion teacher. She works at the Faculty of Technical and Social Sciences of Miercurea Ciuc, the Sapientia - Hungarian University of Transylvania, and she is doing her PhD studies at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University.
E-mail address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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The Romanian Orthodox Church engaged, after the fall of communism, in the reconstruction of its public identity and its position in society. The public discourse of its official representatives – the Holy Synod and individual hierarchs, especially the Patriarch Teoctist – expresses and „translates” this process to the faithful and the general public. Its perception by this public, particularly when mediated by means of mass communication, is usually partial and frequently altered.

By focusing on the official discourse of the Romanian Orthodox Church representatives, as expressed in the ecclesiastical press and (re)transmitted in the common mass media, this paper will explore the justification/explanation by ecclesiastical officials of this process, following the lines of two main - intertwined - lines: the legitimization of the resurgence in the public sphere of the Church as an institution of spiritual and social assistance and its presence as the privileged keeper and guardian of national values.
It will be further argued that, while explicitly refuting and condemning any signs of secularization in the Romanian society, the Romanian Orthodox Church, through its official discourse, is actually contributing to the deepening of this very process within both society and the Church itself.
Our main sources for the public discourse of the Romanian Orthodox Church will be the ecclesiastical press and collections of speeches, sermons, articles of Orthodox hierarchs and documents of the Holy Synod. For the theoretical framing of the paper, the main references will be works of Thomas Luckmann, Danièle Hérvieu-Léger, Grace Davie, René Rémond, etc.
Iuliana Conovici is PhD student and teaches at the Department of Political Science, University of Bucharest. Her main areas of interest: religion in post-communism and secularization theory. She published several articles about the Romanian Orthodox Church in the post-communist Romania. E-mail address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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Some of the post-socialist countries of Europe experienced after the fall of communism what some called a religious revival. Both anthropologists and sociologists agreed that they discovered serious evidence against the case of secularization theory. What unfortunately most of them failed to notice was the particular shape and form of this religious growth and the structural changes of religious representations triggered by the post-communist period.
On one side this religious growth meant moving away from traditional religious expressions towards new religious forms: oriental beliefs, especially Buddhism, yoga and new age movements and on the other side a strong rejection of any institutionalized religious authority. For
example for the young generation that grew up in the new post-socialist world this meant both a religious quest on one side and freedom from any kind of bonds that tended to restrict their liberty at the moral-practical level on the other side. Religion became spirituality and established orthodox religious identities were questioned with new cultural means, other than the old fashion atheist rhetoric.
The anthropological quest to explore the new capitalistic culture of Romania has to approach the impact of the emergent post-modern cultural identities on religion and religious representation. This paper takes a sociological and anthropological look at the cosmologies of capitalism in Romania and its impact on traditional religious mentalities. How westernized is our religion and how do young generations approach the politics of a new understanding of religiosity in post-socialist Romania?
Sorin Gog is a sociologist, works as assistent lecturer at the faculty of Sociology and Social Work, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. His main fields of interest are: sociology and anthropology of religion, social theories, social values and the problem of modernity and postmodernity. E-mail address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Full text (in Hungarian)