As Romania considers religious freedom laws that would affect the lives of its 22 million citizens, leaders of various Orthodox and Protestant churches, government representatives and overseas participants came together Sept. 12 to 13 for a seminar on “Religious Liberty in the Romanian and European Context.”

The sessions were organized by the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs,  State Secretariat for Religious Affairs and the National Association for the Defense of Religious Liberty, “Conscience and Liberty,” and attracted scholars, non-governmental organization representatives and media.

Adrian Iorgulescu, Minister of Culture and Religious Affairs, emphasized the special importance of this event to both the churches and the state. Patriarch Teoctist of the Orthodox Romanian Church echoed his sentiments, saying liberty is one of the most important gifts that God gave man. Religious liberty is the chief freedom, he said.

In the first session of the symposium, entitled “The Legal Statute of the Churches and Religious Organizations,” Bishop Daniel, Metropolitan of Moldavia and Bucovina, highlighted the contribution the church brings to social life, which the state recognizes through the draft of the Law on Religion that was submitted to Parliament for discussion.

Metropolitan Daniel, who made a special contribution to the draft on the proposed Law of Religion, stressed partnership between state and religious groups.

The Metropolitan also discussed the issue of limited autonomy for religious groups, noting the Orthodox Romanian Church, as a result of confiscation of its properties, has come to depend on the financial contribution of the state.

“Romania stands at a crossroads,” said Dr. W. Cole Durham Jr., a law professor at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, United States, and a consulting expert to the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE. He said the proposed religious law is good because it offers religious liberty, but could bear improvement to what he called a “multi-tiered” system of religious organizations that gives some groups more prominence than others.

Dr. Durham urged Romania to not only comply with international standards regarding church-state relations, but to exceed these.

At a second session, Dr. John Graz, secretary-general of the International Religious Liberty Association, or IRLA, spoke about the necessity of dialogue and its importance in inter-church relations and with non-Christians.

Dr. Rik Torfs, a member of the European Consortium for State-Church Research, and a canon law professor at the Catholic University in Louvain, Belgium, spoke of possible “hidden consequences” when religious groups gain equal privileges, specifically the creation of a countercultural climate between religions and the state. Equality is increasingly important and there is a renewed concern for religion, even a very strong interest, he said. He noted the difficulty faced when religions make claims that might disparage those of other groups. This may cause states not to intervene, he explained.

Official neutrality on religion doesn’t mean indifference toward religious life. State neutrality means the state can’t be used by a certain religion, Adrian Lemeni, state secretary for Religious Affairs said. To publicly reject religious life would mean to say that it doesn’t have value.

“This was an important congress and a very successful one in a country where legislation on religious freedom is still pending,” Dr. Graz told ANN in an interview. “Having the minister of religious affairs, the patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, and other religious leaders in attendance was a very good sign about the progress of religious freedom in Romania.”