Aleksandra Djurić-Milovanović. Dvostruke manjine u Srbiji: O posebnostima u religiji i etnicitetu Rumuna u Vojvodini. Belgrade: Institute for Balkan Studies, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2015. 348 pp. EUR 15.00 (paper), ISBN 978-86-7179-090-1.

Reviewed by Ksenija Kolerović (University of Manchester)
Published on H-Romania (October, 2015)
Commissioned by R. Chris Davis (Lone Star College - Kingwood)

Neo-Protestant Romanians from Serbia: Between Religious and Ethnic Identity

Dvostruke manjine u Srbiji: O posebnostima u religiji i etnicitetu Rumuna u Vojvodini (original title in Serbian/Cyrillic, Двоструке мањине у Србији. О посебностима у религији и етницитету Румуна у Војводини—Double minorities in Serbia: Distinctive aspects of the religion and ethnicity of the Romanians in Vojvodina) is a study of neo-Protestant religions—Nazarene, Baptist, Adventist, and Pentecostal—within the context of the Romanian national minority from Vojvodina, the region situated in the north of Serbia. Written in Serbian but including an extended English-language summary, it represents a reworked version of a PhD dissertation defended at the University of Belgrade in November 2012. The title of the book reveals the main research aim of the study as well as the key concept employed in the analysis. Aleksandra Djurić-Milovanović aims to explore the relationship between religious and ethnic identity among neo-Protestant Romanians from Serbia, shedding light on the extent to which the religious identity determines or influences ethnic identity. Neo-Protestant Romanians are understood through the concept of “double minority” because of their double minority status: they are simultaneously an ethnic, Romanian, minority within the Serbian state, and a religious minority within the overwhelmingly and traditionally Orthodox Romanian community. The study is a result of an interdisciplinary approach combining ethnographic methods with a range of methodologies from such disciplines as history, anthropology, political science, and theology. It contains a multifaceted analysis of neo-Protestantism as a social phenomenon.

In Serbia, the study of Serbia’s ethnic Romanian communities has a relatively long and established tradition in various disciplines. Especially after the fall of Communism, this topic has also attracted significant attention among Romanian academics. However, Serbia’s religious minorities represent a relatively new and still insufficiently explored field. Written from two minority perspectives, ethnic and religious, the book provides a welcome contribution to the further understanding of neo-Protestant religions in contemporary Serbia, and offers a fresh insight into how these confessions have influenced the identity dynamics within the Romanian ethnic minority.

Chapter 5, “The Relationship between Religious and Ethnic Identity,” is perhaps the most significant contribution of the study, as it analyzes the self-identification process undergone by the Romanian-speaking members of neo-Protestant communities. Based on ethnographic data, the findings indicate that the self-identity of neo-Protestant ethnic Romanians is primarily determined by their religious affiliation. However, the analysis also points out that the relationship between the community’s supranational religious identity, determined by the supranational and culturally neutral character of neo-Protestantism, on the one hand, and the community’s more traditional Romanian ethnic identity, as defined by Romanian language and Orthodoxy, on the other, remains complex and uncertain. Djurić-Milovanović’s conclusion is that religious and ethnic identities among Romanian-speaking members of neo-Protestant denominations alternate with one another, and, in certain contexts, are flexible categories.

Chapter 6, “Multiculturalism, Religious Pluralism, and Double Minorities,” comprises the third thematic bloc of this study, which examines neo-Protestant religions in relation to Serbian legislation and practice concerning ethnic and religious minorities, and the possible implications of these policies on identity-related issues among the Romanian neo-Protestants. In this context, Djurić-Milovanović challenges the very concepts and policies of religious pluralism and multiculturalism and their applicability to minority religions.

Significant space is dedicated to the presentation of the ethnographic material collected during the author’s fieldwork. The largest part of chapter 4 consists of a series of themes that have been identified in the interviews the author conducted with members of neo-Protestant communities, and a range of photographs representing various moments of communities’ religious life. Excerpts containing interviewees’ understanding of religious, interreligious, and interethnic issues are quoted and commented on. While the material contained in this section is very rich and has enormous potential for analysis, the section itself represents a missed opportunity for a critical engagement. Namely, Djurić-Milovanović limited herself to what is a rather illustrative approach to the ethnographic data, without providing a clear methodology explaining how the selected material contributes toward her research questions.

While, overall, the book reads well, some organizational choices make certain topics somewhat repetitive and split. The most evident of these is the decision to deal with the bulk of the historical overview of neo-Protestantism among the Romanian minority in chapter 3, “Romanians from Vojvodina,” separately from the general historical outline in chapter 2, “Historical Context: Development of Protestantism and Neo-Protestantism,” where the phenomenon is explored in global, European, and Serbian contexts, and only sparingly in the Romanian minority setting. Separating the historical overview of neo-Protestantism among the Romanian minority from the larger geographical and historical context makes it less immediate for the reader to fully appreciate and understand the specificities of neo-Protestantism as it took place within Romanian communities from Vojvodina, as well as the connections of neo-Protestant denominations professed by members of the Romanian minority with the general historical trend of neo-Protestantism.

These remarks aside, Double Minorities in Serbia offers a valuable contribution to religious and ethnic studies, and, given its interdisciplinary character, can stimulate further research exploring the fascinating relationship between religion and ethnicity.

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Citation: Ksenija Kolerović. Review of Djurić-Milovanović, Aleksandra, Dvostruke manjine u Srbiji: O posebnostima u religiji i etnicitetu Rumuna u Vojvodini. H-Romania, H-Net Reviews. October, 2015.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=44746

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.