Of Middlemen and Intermediaries State and Church in Communist Romania

The middleman and the insider/outsider were the two characters that impacted and defined the construction of the relationship between state and church in communist Romania. They functioned as the conveyor belt of this complicated mechanism. Sometimes congruent, the middleman also the insider, the inspector/ communist functionary also a member of the church, paradoxically joining two seemingly incompatible positions to speak both for the communist state and for his religious institution, sometimes incongruent, two different positions in the state administration, one being endowed with authority over the religious life, one only administering authority, both go-betweens the church and the state administration. In defining the relationship between between politics and religion in communist Romania these two positions that one finds at their intersection became the subject of the present research.