Oastea Domnului: The Lord’s Army
Today I did a fascinating bit of reading about a Romanian movement known as the Oastea Domnului, or the “Lord’s Army.” The Lord’s Army is an Orthodox renewal movement started by a Romanian priest in the 1920’s, and its story represents the recent history of Orthodoxy in Romania in many ways. I found two different online histories of the movement, one written by an Orthodox, and one by a Baptist, and the different spin that each puts on the event tells much, often more than their words. In many places, they are word-for-word identical and seem to be quoting the same sources, but as you’ll see they give vastly different pictures of some important events. Unfortunately, they’re both in Romanian, so unless you can read Romanian you’ll have to be happy with the fragments that I translate here.
The Lord’s Army began with the Orthodox priest Iosif Trifa, who in the 1920’s was serving in Sibiu in central Romania. His earlier years as a priest were marked by immorality and carelessness. As he tells it:
For many years I was also a worldly man. Even as a country priest, I was in good measure a worldly man. I lived with in the mad idea that I was a priest only when dressed in my liturgical garb; beyond that I was a man that had to “live my life”. This horrible idea which - what pain! - is held even today, split me in two: into the man of the altar and into the other, who walked through the village and partied. What madness! The light was made to live together with darkness. The Lord be praised that He didn’t leave me to perish in this deceptive madness of the soul. I began to awaken to a new life.
(From the Orthodox source)
As God began to move on his heart, Fr. Trifa began to see the need for spiritual awakening and repentance in Romania. He published a series of articles and books on this theme, and in January 1923 the foundations for the Lord’s Army were laid with an article he published in The Light of the Villages. The following years brought forth what both articles describe as a remarkable transformation throughout the country: thousands of people, villagers and intellectuals alike, turned aside from worldly lives and turned to prayer and repentance. Taverns were converted into places of prayer, and entire villages were awakened to take their Orthodox faith seriously. In 1929 Fr. Trifa purchased a printing press, and for the next 15 years it turned out tracts, books, and calendars focused on prayer and repentance under the banner of the Lord’s Army.
Unfortunately, in the latter half of the 1930’s things turned sour. Here is where the Orthodox and Baptist histories diverge the most; I’ll let each tell its own story, beginning with the Baptist account:
The continually growing number of members of the Army unsettled the leadership of the Orthodox Church, especially the Metropolitan of Sibiu, Nicolae Bălan. Out of envy, Fr. Trifa entered into the bad graces of the heirachy. The Metropolitan began to spread dirty rumors and slander about Trifa. When these did not have the desired effect, the Orthodox Church moved on to openly fight against the Lord’s Army. This battle lasted years on end. Fr. Trifa was recalled, and the printing press was confiscated by the Orthodox Church. The climax of these campaigns of persecution was Trifa’s accusation before the Holy Synod. In the end (like Luther in Catholic Germany), Fr. Iosif Trifa, one of the greatest sons of Christianity in Romania, was excommunicated.
(Through this, the Orthodox heirarchy refuzed a renewal from within the Church, pushing a great number of spiritual seekers to move towards the evangelical churches. - n.ed.)
The Orthodox account is more nuanced:
At this time, the neoprotestant sects that moving in Romania intensified their propaganda trying to present the Lord’s Army as being a reform movement of the Protestant sort in the middle of the Romanian Orthodox Church, on the one hand, and to attract the members of the Army to convert to their churches, on the other hand. Many of those who had adhered to the Lord’s Army had done it in a Protestant spirit. Up to today there exist different visions even among the members of the Army with regards to the Lord’s Army….
Unfortunately, the momentum that the movement had gained in the 1930’s degenerated. Some members of the Army begain to distance themselves from the true faith, opened the doors of sectarian propaganda, and de facto ended up abandoning the Church. This aspect of the movement made some hierarchs of the Church adopt a negative position regarding the Lord’s Army, among whom was the one who had initially supported Fr. Trifa, Metropolitan Bălan. Here and there there was talk of a conflict of pride.
At that point the Church tried to exercise its authority over the Lord’s Army, which led to misunderstandings and redoubled positions.
In those years Romania was heading with quick steps towards dictatorship. The Legionnaire’s Movement [a Romanian Fascist group] was in full bore with her pseudo-Orthodox pretensions, and on the international scale Nazi Germani had already begun its preparations for war. Romania, found at the intersection of the great powers, needed to look after its internal order and quietude.
In these conditions, the leadership of the Church decided to defrock Fr. Iosif Trifa and to stop all activities of the Lord’s Army. The printing press was confiscated and they began to pressure the Army’s members to cease all activity.
Shortly after this turn of affairs, Trifa grew sick and died, deeply grieved at what had become of his organization. (Dumnezeu să-l miluiască.)
So, was the Lord’s Army outlawed because of a jealous heirarchy, or over concerns of heresy and political pragmatism? Probably a little bit of both. And was Trifa actually excommunicated, or only expelled from the priesthood? This I don’t know, but I’m inclined to believe the Orthodox account on this matter, particularly in light of what happened later.
Despite this oppression, the Lord’s Army did not cease operating. It simply went underground, and remained there during the years of communism from the 1940’s through 1989. In this period dozens of Army members were imprisoned by the government, some repeatedly and for many years. At one point the government lured in a leader of the Army with talk of legalizing the movement, only to make new arrests with the information he gave them. These persecutions were done with the complicity of the Orthodox hierarchy, even (according to the Baptist source) at their request.
Nonetheless, the movement survived and came out from underground with the collapse of communism in 1989. Shortly afterwards the Orthodox Church lifted the ban against the Lord’s Army and posthumously reinstated Fr. Trifa, and the Lord’s Army now enjoys an official office within the national Synod. However, its position in the Orthodox Church is quite ambiguous, because the protestantizing elements within the movement essentially took over during the years underground.
In the Lord’s Army today there exists a conservative wing that maintains what was probably Fr. Trifa’s original vision: a totally Orthodox holiness movement calling for repentance and right living, but within Orthodoxy, not away from it. The larger wing is the reforming wing, which sees itself as bringing an essential renewal to the Orthodox church and is basically crypto-Protestant in its theology and practice. This is a home for many people who wish to remain culturally Orthodox, but who embrace Protestant forms of worship and mostly Protestant ideals. Ultimately, I have heard that some 70% of the Army’s members eventually wind up attending Protestant churches. It thus acts like a halfway house, siphoning people away from Orthodoxy and into Protestantism through an innocent-looking compromise.
Thus a paradox: The Lord’s Army is officially Orthodox, but is viewed with hostility and suspicion among the Orthodox leadership while the Protestants encourage and fund the movement.
To be honest, I understand the position of the Orthodox leadership. The Protestants who support the movement don’t support it because they honestly want people to remain Orthodox–they do it because they want to bring people to their cluster of neoprotestant sects, and see the Lord’s Army as an evangelism method. This is dishonest, and if I were an Orthodox bishop I wouldn’t like it one bit. On the other hand, the Orthodox probably shot themselves in the foot by trying to cut the movement off, because the more Orthodox parts of the movement died out, while the Protestant ties grew stronger. It’s a frustrating situation.
In any case, what I read at the Baptist site convinces me that the movement has lost much of its original vision–but that’s a topic for another post.
March 23rd, 2005 at 11:16 pm
Dragule, tin sa te anunt ca in casa unchesului tatalui meu din satul de langa Corocaiesti in fiecare zi se tine “adunare” cum zic ei. Ei sunt ostasi. Programul lor nu se difera cu nimic de cel al unei biserici de pocaiti. Aici la coltul blocului avem o familie de ostasi in casa carora se face adunare. Mamica zicea ca e la fel ca orice program de la biserica numai ca nu au o biserica ci se aduna in casa cuiva. Se roaga ca si noi, predica, canta(folosind acordeonul). Nenea Augustel zicea ca in Corocaiesti din cauza ca multi dintre biseica penticostala nu se intelegeau(nu-si legau firea de banca in care stateau) s-au despartit si o mare parte din ei au plecat la biserica:”Oastea Domnului” care acuma e alcatuita din penticostali razvratiti. Oricum, Iosif Trifa a facut o treaba buna! Sa vedem ce facem noi!