„Us” and „Them”. The Discourse of a „National Church” about „Religious Freedom” and „Religious Pluralism”

The paper intends to deal with the manner in which a religious actor, the Romanian Orthodox Church, elaborates and reproduces its public discourse about „religious pluralism”. Building on Dominique Maingueneau’s notions of „generic scene” and „scenography” the analysis uses the public declarations of the Romanian Orthodox Church’s clergy during the period 1990-2004 in order to illustrate the motivations, the instruments and the effects of a particular discursive behavior. The main hypothesis of this study is that the discourse about „religious pluralism” is a construction based on different discourses placed in an interdependent relationship, the two most important among them being the discourse about the „self” („us”) and that about „the others” („them”) due to their complementary/symbiotic connection.