2.4
Roma and the
‘New Religions’ in Europe
Traditional ethnological accounts defined the relationship between Roma and institutional religion by a double negation. On the one hand, it was observed that Roma do not adhere to a church or religion which could be seen as of ‘their own’, on the other hand, their relationship with the churches and religious traditions followed by the dominant populations was criticized as being ‘insincere’, ‘mimetic’ and ‘magical’. Many of these analyses reproduced stereotypical perceptions.
