Today I talked to Iemima Ploscariu about Alternative Evangelicals: Challenging Nationalism in Interwar Romania's Multi-ethnic Borderlands (Brill, 2024).
Evangelicals in interwar Romania were a vibrant mix of ethnicities, languages, and social statuses. Jews, Roma, Germans, Hungarians, Serbs, Ukrainians, and Russians sang, prayed, and preached in their native languages. Romanian statesmen perceived them as a danger for the construction of a strong post-WWI national identity. The lived religion of interwar Romanian evangelicals and their struggle through music for legitimacy demonstrates the close ties between national self-understanding and religion. The diverse groups of Romanian evangelicals reveal how minorities in 20th century Europe challenged established religious concepts and constructed their new identities.
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