The Romanian Orthodox Clergy Faced with the Challenges of Anti-Semitism and the Legionary Movement

Abstract

The paper analyzes the ideological sources of anti-Semitism in Romania before and after the great Romanian unification of 1918. Shortly before the First World War, Jews made up about 4.6 percent of the population in the Romanian kingdom, but were denied Romanian citizenship, in particular for economic (and not religious-Christian) reasons. The presence of the Jews was seen by many as an obstacle to “healthy and national modernization of the Romanian nation.”

After unification in 1918, Romanian citizenship was nevertheless recognized for this segment of the population. However, the protests connected with this gave rise to a previously unimaginable religious-mystical anti-Semitic trend. Two different and not always friendly political movements in the spectrum of right-wing extremism were founded: The League for Christian National Defense (LANC) and the Legion of the Archangel Michael (also called Legionaries); both were able to collect about 25 percent of the vote in the last democratic elections of the interwar period in 1937. The position of the Romanian Orthodox Church against these two political movements was ambiguous. Many pastors sympathized with the Legion. However, since the Legion leaders saw themselves as founders of a new spiritual revolution with the aim of forming a new human, most bishops could not openly support the Legion; on the contrary, the more conservative, not revolutionary but anti-Semitic, LANC was promoted by Church representatives.

Even after the Legion came to power on September 14, 1940, the Legionnaires’ expectations of full Church support were not fulfilled. After the political turn in 1989, the national-Christian ideas of the Legion became popular once again, which the many reprints of Legionary writings clearly show.