The Politics of Secularism in International Relations

the Uniate Church, which was established in 1699, recognised the primacy of religious jurisdiction of Rome over Constantinople’. The Habsburgs are completely forgotten, and from this chapter one can get the idea that the Uniate Church is not such an artificial creature of political power, as suggested on page 14. A better review could have easily fixed all these drawbacks. The Uniate Church is not the only church whose description is spoiled by mistakes: on page 14, the Georgian Orthodox Church is listed among the Orthodox churches ‘incorporated under Russian jurisdiction’ in the Soviet era. Actually, the Georgian Patriarchate, re-established in 1917, was the only Orthodox authority within the Soviet borders to be (theoretically) autonomous from the Moscow Patriarchate. Another false statement is made on page 183, when, reporting the visit that Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia paid to Romania in 1964, Leustean claims that ‘Ethiopia was the only Orthodox Country in Africa’. The most important Church in Ethiopia is actually labelled as ‘Orthodox’, but it is not in ecclesiastical communion with the Orthodox churches, nor with the Romanian one. Being a pre-Chalcedonian church, the Ethiopian Church is rather in communion with the Coptic Church of Egypt, the Armenian Church and some other lesser-known churches of the Middle East. Despite of these shortcomings, however, Orthodoxy and the Cold War is a valuable work, well documented and well written. It provides an important contribution to the study of the contemporary history of Romania as well as of religious life under Communism.