Understanding Planning as a Cultural-religious Practice: A Case Study Analysis of Three Christian Denominations' Roles in Minority Community Development in Romania

Planning with ethnic minorities burdened under the “cross of history” poses many challenges for settler nation-states. These challenges are tied to identity, culture, historic context, the public representation of local interests, erosion of civil rights, and territorial and spatial disputes. This is further complicated when religion or religious institutions operate in a position of power in a perceived secular state at the level of an ethnoregion. There is a significant lack of conversation regarding the role of religious institutions in these historically fragmented ethnic minorities, their community building efforts, and the relationship to planning and community development in the U.S. and abroad. Because of this gap, it is difficult to fully understand the role that religious institutions may play in local to regional community development processes. This study is a first step in filling that gap. This qualitative dissertation study used a grounded theory approach to systematically analyze three Christian denominations’ roles in Hungarian ethnic minority living in Romania. The three denominations are the Unitarian, Roman Catholic, and Reformed Churches. Materials examined included bulletins between 1989-2019, newspaper articles, archival records, and interviews collected during 2019. The results of this dissertation bring attention to the Churches’ work in the cultural-historical context of their ancestral land. This study shows the actively lived and experienced religious ethno-spiritual practices and processes that fuel (1) the cross-scale roles (village to region) of denominations, and (2) the role of priests at the village level that translates into community and/or spatial aspect changes within the village, such as community building, social capital, and community cohesion. Finally, this study presents (3) a cultural-religious practice approach to planning and the incorporation of a new language to understand such an approach