The following post is from Shane McNary, one of CBF’s field personnel in Slovakia.

Multiculturality, suggests Nicolae Gheorghe and Thomas Acton in an essay entitled “Citizens of the world and nowhere,” may be the most appropriate way to describe the diversity of the Romany people.  The people we know today as the Romany people arrived in the Balkans as early as the 13^th century and were in central Europe by the late 14^th to the early 15^th century.

It was not until 1760 in Holland when a Hungarian theology student overheard fellow students from India discussing the Sanskrit language that clues to the origins of the Roma were discovered.  Many assumed that the traveling groups of entrepreneurs had originated in Egypt, hence the widely pejorative misnomer “gypsy.”

As a young man living in Hungary, the theology student’s family had employed Romany day-laborers and he had picked up some of their language, including words he recognized as his fellow students spoke about ancient Sanskrit.  This chance encounter transformed our understanding of the origins of the Romany people.

Though not a perfect record, linguistics is one of the few ways to trace the history of migratory peoples.  Recent linguistic studies suggest that by the year 1000, the people known as Romany left India in perhaps as many as three different migratory waves.

The Romany people, despite lacking a complete written history, are examples of constant movement and adaptation to different cultures.  The treatment of the Romany by majority populations over the centuries has been and continues to be “a barometer of justice and civilization” (Anne Sutherland writing in Conformity and Conflict, 220).

• In present-day Romania, Roma were held as slaves for centuries, gaining emancipation in the 1850’s.
• Almost one-third of all Roma in Europe were exterminated by the Nazis during World War 2, estimates are 600,000 perished including 90% of the prewar Roma population in the Czech lands.
• Roma have an extremely heterogeneous culture – their language has many different dialects which are not mutually understandable, for example – and this makes it difficult to study them or make comparisons of Roma from one country to another.
• Though it is not possible to speak of a single Roma culture, the principles of close family bonds, adaptivity within different societies, and resilience in the face of constant persecution are common among all Roma groups.
•  The Roma represent the archetype of the “other” the church is called to embrace.  The challenges are significant, but as Miroslav Volf writes about his personal challenge of embracing the other in his context, “I cannot – but as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to.” (9)
• Rodney ‘Gipsy’ Smith, a Methodist evangelist, spoke throughout England in his ministry with the Salvation Army.  He traveled around the world including to Australia and even to Abilene, Texas on his evangelistic campaigns.  A musician himself, he loved to sing the gospel chorus “Let the Beauty of Jesus be seen in me” during his sermons.
• Marime, or ritual impurity, is said to be the one distinctive of all Roma groups.  How marime is demonstrated, including in their relations with outsiders varies tremendously.
• It is estimated that between four and nine million Romany people live in Europe, including Turkey.  The exact number is difficult to say precisely because of the different ways individual countries conduct their census and account for ethnic minorities.