Ionuț Florin Biliuță
Junior Fellow (11/2014 - 06/2015)
Sowing the Seeds of Hate. The Antisemitism of the Orthodox Church in Interwar Romania
The aim of my research project is to perceive how antisemitism and eventually Holocaust entangled with the Romanian Orthodox Church’s theology in the interwar period. In order to better understand this radical shift in Orthodox theology and to accurately engulf the concept of ‚race‘ in a clear-cut theological framework, the focus of the project falls on three theologians (Nichifor Crainic, Fr. Ilie Imbrescu and Fr. Liviu Stan). They are perceived through the conceptual lenses of fascist studies, development of Christian doctrine and antisemitism in a typological manner. If Nichifor Crainic and Fr. Liviu Stan stand out as the representatives of the acculturated, highly-trained Orthodox theologian teaching in the university, Fr. Ilie Imbrescu embodies the lay missionary priest. As university professors and decision-makers in the state apparatus, they all played a significant role in the fascization of the Romanian Orthodox Church and the Romanian state in the interwar period. They also brought their contribution to the creation of an Orthodox Exarchate in the conquered Ukraine during World War II.
Ionut Biliuta has a PhD in History from CEU (Budapest, Hungary) and is a PhD student in Theology at Babeş-Bolyai University (Cluj-Napoca, Romania). He has been a Junior Research Fellow at “New Europe College. Institute for Advanced Studies” from Bucharest, Romania (2010-2011), “Leibniz Institute of European History” from Mainz, Germany (2011-2012), Junior Visiting Research Fellow at “Modern European History Research Centre” at Oxford University’s (2011). From October 2013 until late May, 2014 he was Tziporah Wiesel Fellow at “Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies”,United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington DC, USA). Together with Professor Nadia Al-Bagdadi and Dr. Anca Şincan he is editing Transforming a Church. Eastern Christianity in Post-Imperial Societies (Budapest: CEU University Press, 2014).