Abstract
The article presents the functioning of a Baptist group of Roma in the context of the local community of the village of Dabnitsa in the Garmen municipality in Bulgaria. Based on ethnographic interviews and press materials, the study comments on the role of political, socio-economic and religious factors in the emergence and resolution of confessional tensions in the cohabitation of people belonging to traditional religions for the region (Islam, Orthodoxy) and newly converted to Evangelism Roma.
The negative attitude of local Muslims and Christians towards the Baptists leads to the exclusion of evangelicals from traditional social networks. There is an overlap of economic, social and political factors, which are expressed in the form of confrontation on religious grounds. The problem of burying newly converted evangelicals in Muslim and Orthodox cemeteries is symptomatic of attitudes towards „the others“ and the ability to accept differences in the otherwise widely proclaimed аs „tolerant“ social environment in Bulgaria.
Keywords: religious conversion, Roma, evangelization, local community
Loading…
Reload document 
Open in new tab
