Lausanne World Pulse – Urban Articles – The Roma (Gypsy) Community in Bucharest, Romania
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Estimates from social agencies and NGOs working the streets say there are approximately ten thousand or more street children in Bucharest. Roma or Gypsy children account for about eighty percent of all children abandoned in Romania. |
Coming to Bucharest to compete for housing, job opportunities, better education and a new beginning has placed the Roma people in an even more precarious situation. They are barred from acquiring proper housing and restrained from finding job opportunities; their children are degraded and held back in school. Tragically, across Romania less than eight percent of Roma children attend elementary school and of these, only two percent attain a high school or college education. In general, the Roma working class, if gainfully employed, are engaged in civic sanitary services, garbage pick-up, street cleaning, restaurant dish washing and other menial services that continue to hold them enslaved in economic bondage.
The State of the Church in Roma Communities
The churches that minister to the Roma people are predominately associated with the Assemblies of God. In Bucharest, there are two relatively large Roma churches, which have three hundred to five hundred congregants. There are perhaps another four to six churches with less than 150 adherents. In the 2001 Operation World Handbook, Patrick Johnstone places the Roma Evangelical (Church) Movement (REM) at thirty thousand adherents in 115 congregations. The majority of REM churches are located outside the metropolitan area. The number Johnstone cites, however, does not include Roma believers actively involved in other evangelical churches where racial profiling is not considered.
In a city teeming with social disorder, street kids, prostitution, poverty, disability, disease and homeless children and adults, it is rare to find a church with either social or evangelistic outreach. This reserved mentality is more cultural than by design or choice. Throughout the Communist era, and carried forward to this day, the government has recognized and financed only fifteen religious entities.
These officially recognized groups and the scope of their activity are governed by the Department of Cults and are subject to strict regulations. For years, the restriction prohibited open-air services, pilgrimages, evangelism and community work. Although less restricted today than a decade ago, the Church is not unlike a person scarred by the effects of an abusive childhood: the Romanian Church collectively shares in the trauma of a past that cannot be easily removed. The majority of today’s church leadership, brought up under the Communist-dictum, still feel compelled to adhere to yesterday’s repressive directives.
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Simona Grigore ministers to Roma children in cities in the central region of Romania. She works with congregations seeking to do integral mission in these communities. She is also completing a degree in religious education. |