RELIGIONS AS COMPLEX ADAPTIVE

SYSTEMS AND THEIR REACTION TO

PRESSURE:
THE ROMANIAN ORTHODOX AND GREEK-
CATHOLIC CHURCHES DURING AND
AFTER THE COLD WAR
AUTHOR: Andrei-Razvan Coltea SUPERVISOR: Liu Yi
 RELIGION = RE (AGAIN) + LIGARE
(TO BIND/CONNECT) (Lucretius)

“Religion is a general term used in most modern European languages

to designate all concepts concerning belief in God(s) and Goddess(es)
as well as other spiritual beings or transcendental ultimate concerns”
(The Penguin Dictionary1.of Religion )
Can analyzing religions as complex adaptive
systems offer a better understanding of religious
phenomena compared to other existing theories?
2. What is the impact of strong stressors (political
pressure, pandemics) on religious complex adaptive
systems?
3. How can complexity theory explain the evolution of
the Romanian Orthodox2 and Greek-Catholic
 Complexity and Information
A system can be called complex when the level of
interconnectedness between its elements is so high that
removing/modifying one of them disrupts its behavior in
ways that cannot be qualitatively and quantitatively
predicted based on the analysis of the element in question.
Information is the “currency of life, the ability to make predictions
with a likelihood better than chance” (Adami 2021). Lower
organisms make simple predictions regarding their environment
(such as where to find carbon, water, sugar, based on their
perception of light, temperature, etc.). In higher organisms the
complexity and precision of these predictions increases, together
with the chances of survival and reproduction.
EVOLUTION = information flow from the environment into the
genome. Shrodinger (1944): Organisms feed on negative entropy. It is
information that keeps the organism out of equilibrium: in its absence,
it would eventually die because of not being able to effectively predict
its environment and extract work/energy from its 3 fluctuations
Religions are abstract complex adaptive systems that
process and organize informational inputs from the
environment in order to contrive outputs in the form
of meaning, thus reducing its perceived randomness,
entropy or complexity. In short, they are complexity
reducing cultural technologies.

Meaning is the teleological structuring of reality,

aimed at making it orderly, coherent, purposeful and
significant; it is the resultant of the interactions
between multiple cognitive operations: signal/noise
distinctions.

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 RELIGIOUS COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS

The Building Blocks of Religious Complex Adaptive Systems:

I- Identity R- Rituals A-Authority
SA- Supernatural Agents AB-Afterlife Beliefs SU-Superstitions
M-Myths S-Sacred
MO-Moral Obligations T-Taboos
 FRAGILITY
The capacity of a system to
resist
randomness/volatility/stressors
fragile systems collapse
Robust systems maintain their state
antifragile systems improve

HOW TO DETECT FRAGILITY

① Centralization makes systems prone to doctrinal inflexibility, concentration of responsibility
and risk, decreased adaptability.
② Coupling refers to the linking of systems (such as political and religious). Systemic
malfunctioning can be contagious
③ Monotonicity refers to the inability of learning from past mistakes and modifying the
response to stressors.
④ Stress starvation means withholding stress from systems, thus increasing their fragility .

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 CASE STUDY: THE ROMANIAN ORTHODOX
CHURCH
SYMPHONIA – A Normative theory formulated by the
Byzantine emperor Justinian (527-565 C.E.) according
to which the Church and the State complement each
other, one dealing with human affairs and the other
with divine matters.

The Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC) is a fragile institution:

1. It reacted monotonously to all the regime changes from the second half of the
19th century onwards (from the Cuza principality to parliamentary monarchy,
from the royal dictatorship to fascism and eventually communism)
2. It has been centralized (especially by the communist regime seeking to
transform the church into a tool of the state)
3. It has been continuously coupled with political systems, irrespective of their
respective political colors
4. It has been stress starved due to symphonia
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 ROC Patriarch Justin Moisescu showed
unconditional support for the regime, even
during the demolition of several historical
churches in Bucharest in the late 1970s-
early 1980s

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Patriarch Daniel (2007- Orthodox Communion during COVID-19
present)^ quarantine

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THE ROC HAS BEEN at THE CENTER OF MULTIPLE CONTROVERSIES AFTER 1990:
1. Financial issues regarding state funds embezzlements and exemption from paying taxes
2. Sexual Scandals regarding priests
3. Involvement in electoral campaigns
4. Refusing to return the assets belonging to the Greek-Orthodox Church confiscated by the
communist regime

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 CASE STUDY: THE ROMANIAN Greek-catholic CHURCH
“We were taken from our homes by agents of the police and
taken to Cluj. The Congress Hall was guarded by the police. The
discussions were short. The president was named by an order,
so he did not know what he had to say. At that moment, priest
Zagrai gave him a text. He read it with a trembling voice. The
discussions began…They were interrupted by the audience.
Everybody signed. From there, we were taken to the residence of
the orthodox bishop, Colan. From there to the train station. At
the Athenee Palace we were kept under surveillance.” (Ioan
Florea, participant to the Orthodox-Greek Catholic
Reunification meeting)
“(...) regarding the claimed persecution of the Greek-Catholic priests and faithful, we remind the Apostolic
Nuncio that in the Popular Republic of Romania there is no Greek-Catholic cult anymore, since the end of
1948, when the priests and faithful of this cult returned to the Romanian Orthodox Church. Some isolated
individuals who did not fill the required paperwork and wish to hide behind this fact hostile actions of a
different nature towards the Popular Republic of Romania might perhaps exist. They are however not
connected in any way to the religious matter, but in reality are conducting sabotage directed against the
popular democratic state, initiated by internal and external reactionary forces.”
(Romanian Government reply to11the Apostolic Nuncio AMAE 1949)
The seven Greek-Catholic bishops who died in prison during the
communist regime have been beatified by Pope Francis in 2019

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 Comparative
Religious
Affiliation 1930-
1992-2002-2011

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EUROPEANS VALUES PEW RESEARCH
SURVEY DATA FOR DATA FOR EASTERN
ROMANIA (2008) ^ EUROPE (2017) >14
 HOW IMPORTANT IS RELIGION IN
YOUR LIFE?
The Soros foundation survey on religious behavior in Romania
(2011)

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 PRIMARY SOURCES
✣ Official Archives: National Historical Central Archives (ANIC), The Archive of the Justice Ministry
(AMJDIM), The Archive of the Foreign Affairs Ministry (AMAE), The Archives of the Romanian
Secret Service (ASRI), The Archives for the Study of the Activities of the Securitate (AMCSAS)
✣ Legislation: Official Monitor of Romania’ 1949-2020
✣ Newspapers Archives: Scanteia (Official newspaper of the Communist Party), The Morning Journal,
Romania Libera
✣ Religious Publications: Biserica Ortodoxa Romana 1949-2020– Official Bulletin of the Romanian
Orthodox Church, The Official Journal of the Craiova Archbishopric, “Why we are Greek-Catholics”
handbook, Synodal Documents of the ROC
✣ Official Governmental Census Data: 1930, 1992, 2002, 2011
✣ Independent Surveys on Religious Belonging, Behavior, Attitudes and Values: Europeans Values
Survey 2008, Soros Foundation Survey on Religion in Romania, 2011, PEW 2017, LARICS 2020
✣ Semi-structured Interviews.

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Thank You!

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