Conservative neo-Protestants: Romanian Nazarenes in Serbia

Abstract

This paper will focus on the existence of neo-Protestant religious communities among the Romanian ethnic minority in Serbia and the presence of conservative Nazarenes. In Serbia today, Nazarenes have less than 900 baptized members, even though at the beginning of the 20th century their number was 15,000. The majority of Nazarenes immigrated during the First and Second World War to the United States. There they were called New Amish or New Mennonites. Today the most numerous group, with approximately 400 members, live in the Romanian village of Lokve, in the province of Vojvodina. This Romanian group – illuminates the position of small and minority religious groups in Serbia in general. Even though the dominant confession of the Romanian national minority in Vojvodina is Romanian Orthodoxy, a new dimension of religious identity is provided by the numerous small religious groups themselves. Many are not publicly visible in Serbia, and some, like the Nazarenes, are so small and located in remote corners to be almost invisible. This paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork research I conducted from 2008 in Romanian villages in Serbia within the larger research project “Ethnic and social stratification of the Balkans” conducted on behalf of the Institute for Balkan studies SASA.