Nine Baptists Beaten by Orthodox in Romania

Vol. 5, No. 2, Spring 1997, Covering the Former Soviet Union and East Central Europe

Nine Baptists Beaten by Orthodox in Romania

Otniel Bunaciu

In the village of Ruginoasa in the northeastern part of Romania called Moldova (not to be confused with the Republic of Moldova), a group of Baptist believers were meeting in a room which they had rented. Most of the Baptist believers came from a neighboring town. Local Orthodox priests Pavel, Novac, [and] Doroftei started to mention the Baptist danger in their sermons. On Sunday [30 March 1997], 700 people from the village surrounded the house used by the Baptist believers for worship. Another 150 persons came from the neighboring village carrying crosses, icons, and towels. When the nine Baptists came out from the worship service the crowd started to beat them. Among the group were women [and] a 14 year-old girl. The Orthodox Christians beat the Baptists and kicked them with their feet. Local police did not interfere. Orthodox priests did not call on their Christian believers to stop the beating. When asked by the national TV news crew, nobody in the village had seen anything, although they had heard that there was a fight.

Such events are not singular in that part of Romania although the scale of the beating is exceptional. Romania is very keen to be accepted in NATO and in the European Union. The Baptists in Romania support their country in the effort, as we think that we belong to the European family. At the same time I think that respect for human rights should be part of the standards which Romanians must accept. It is a sad comment that Orthodox believers expressed their allegiance to their faith in a celebration of violence and not of life.

How The Orthodox See It
Gynella Parfenie, writing in the Iasi, Romania, newspaper, Monitorul, notes that

The official viewpoint of the [Romanian Orthodox] Metropolitan Diocese is that both the Orthodox community [in Ruginoasa] and the Orthodox clergy are not guilty of what happened there. The guilty ones are those who came in the midst of an entirely Orthodox community--there is no Baptist there--and aggressed them spiritually in their own home. They disobeyed the Constitution and trespassed common sense as well as social and Christian morality by coming and trying to proselytize. According to Vasile Andreica, an administrative counselor at the Metropolitan Diocese,

The people have been provoked, and after that, they couldn't be mastered. They reacted violently because all other methods had been exhausted. I believe that in the given situation the attitude of the three priests was very welcome and in the spirit of Christian teaching which compels us to defend our faith. We don't see ourselves responsible, because it wasn't we who aggressed them, but they came and aggressed the community. They received an appropriate response. I don?t think that the priests were intolerant, but they only exercised their obligation as spiritual shepherds. The flock has to be guarded against wolves, no matter where they come from. To date, Metropolitan Daniel of Moldova, who has been active in the World Council of Churches and who travels frequently in the West, has given no public statement concerning the controversy.

Sources: E-mail open letter from Otniel Bunaciu, professor at the Institutul Teologic Baptist Bucaresti, 5 April 1997, shared with the Institute for East-West Christian Studies by Radu Gheorghita, Tyndale House, Cambridge University, 8 April 1997; "Official Response from the Orthodox Church," World Evangelical Fellowship Religious Liberty E-mail Conference (religious-liberty@xc.org), 10 April 1997.

Otniel Bunaciu, "Nine Baptists Beaten by Orthodox in Romania," East-West Church & Ministry Report, 5 (Spring 1997), 7.

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