The Romanian Religious Media Landscape: Between Secularization and the Revitalization of Religion

Abstract

Studies on religion in the former communist countries show that the cessation of the socialist repressions against the church and religion was followed by a revitalization of religion. Contributions supporting the model of market religion conclude that there is a higher chance of increasing religious competition and pluralization due to the opening of the religious markets, which ultimately led to an increase of religious vitality. Studies arguing for the secularization paradigm consider that the changes in the former communist countries (including Romania) rather reflect a premature secularization (Pickel, 2012). In this view, after an initial boom of religious sentiment, there has been no significant return to religion. This article provides an overview of Romanian religious media and presents the transformations of the Romanian religious media landscape by proposing the hypothesis that the religious media scene in Romania is impacted by the effects of the two co-existing opposite tendencies: religious vitality and incomplete secularization.