ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates what empirical forms religious pluralism takes in a country with a strong Orthodox monopoly like Romania, and describes some of its most intriguing features. It shows if the Rational Choice Theory, which has religious pluralism at its core, has any explanatory power in a context such as Romania. There is a feeling, especially among Romanian intellectual elites, that Romanian Orthodoxy is grossly overestimated, or at least that essential facts that might prove otherwise are usually left out of academic or public discussions on the matter. The heart of the matter seems to be that Orthodoxy is indeed doing excellently at a macro level, but has genuine problems at the grass-roots level. Romanian Orthodoxy appears to be rather a tradition without faith than a tradition of faith. The theoretical challenge was to come to terms with the two-sidedness of Romanian Orthodoxy by using the concepts of cultural majority and active minority in regard to it.
