God’s Chosen People or God’s Nation? Exploring Evangelical Roma Religious Experience through Bulgarian and Slovak Romani Studies
God’s Chosen People or God’s Nation? Exploring Evangelical Roma Religious Experience through Bulgarian and Slovak Romani Studies

Summary/Abstract: In this article, I address the formation of an imagined Roma evangelical community based on their own conceptions of salvation through faith, referred to as “God’s chosen people” or “God’s nation.” Original research and scholarly interpretations from Bulgarian and Slovak national contexts are used to demonstrate that evangelical faith reconfigures the moral boundaries of Roma communities. The evangelical faith restructures social networks and alters followers’ relationships with traditional religious imagery, particularly through the reduced significance of the Mother of God and the heightened emphasis on Jesus Christ. This article argues that Roma evangelical identity is dynamic and continuously negotiated, shaped both by Roma group affiliation and national context, as well as by transnational religious networks. This dynamic form of identity provides Roma with new ways to cultivate a positive collective image, strengthen internal solidarity, and promote social integration. However, Roma pastors, who serve as recognized representatives of local religious communities, are not unanimous in their views on whether the Roma “God’s chosen people” community constitutes a self-sufficient category or a constituent part of the global Christian evangelical community. This paper is particularly interested in how Romani studies scholars respond to empirical findings on religious developments and how they engage with the concepts of “God’s chosen people” or “God’s nation,” as these notions appear in Bulgarian and Slovak Romani studies. Using both my own empirical results as well as scholarly literature devoted to the topic, my aim is to illuminate the fundamental assumptions underlying these interpretations, as well as the differences and nuances that shape scholarly analyses in each context.

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