Nr. 3-4 /2017 -5
The number of the followers of the penticostal movement is continually raising in Romania and the Roma people are an important part of them. The present paper is an ethnography of the process of the conversion to Penticostalism of the Roma people from Fântânele, a village in Dâmboviţa county, as a result of a 10-month fieldwork. I am concerned with the way in which penticostalism was accepted by the community from the 60s to the present. The framework in which I observ this process is defined by the construction of their identity. Having such occupations as trading and fiddle playing, the community did not show a particular interest in Penticostalism at the beginning, but this changed completely after the fall of Communism. Marginalized on the grounds of ethnicity and auto-marginalized because of religion, the Roma Penticostal community of Fântânele developed on a separate line from the Romanian Penticostal Movement util after the Revolution.
Keywords: penticostalism, religious conversion, marginality, fiddlers.