ROMANIA: Hamilton Promotes Importance of Legislation to Protect Religious Freedom

Conscience and Liberty Association, Romania in partnership with Lugoj City Hall, held a symposium entitled "Religious Liberty or Religious Tolerance" on March 11, 2013.

Gregory Hamilton, president of the Northwest Religious Liberty Association and a member of the ReligiousLiberty.TV advisory panel, spent most of the month of March traveling throughout Romania, a formerly communist country where church members experienced severe religious persecution throughout much of the last century, meeting with religious and government leaders to discuss trends in religious liberty and to promote constitutional reform that would build freedom into Romanian law. Hamilton offered the American perspective on liberty of conscience and emphasized the importance of developing clear and firm legislation to protect religious freedom.

During March 2013, Hamilton visited 14 cities spanning the entire country, gave 2 university constitutional law-history lectures urging constitutional reform; participated in four ecumenical town halls with governmental, religious and academic leaders, conducted five pastor-attorney workshops, and preached five sermons.

The Romanian Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists recently published this article (click the link below the excerpt to read more) about a symposium held at Lugoj City Hall on March 11, 2013.

EXCERPT:

Conscience and Liberty Association, Romania in partnership with Lugoj City Hall, organized Monday, March 11, 2013 a symposium entitled Religious Liberty or Religious Tolerance. The round table was attended by representatives from churches and government from Lugoj, and took place in the city hall council's chambers, and featured Gregory Hamilton, President of the NW Religious Liberty Association from the USA.

Mr. Liviu Savescu, City Hall's representative, opened the discussions with a short presentation of the city of Lugoj and the good relationships between the people living here, followed by Nelu Burcea, president of the Conscience and Liberty Association, who quickly introduced all those present.

Greg Hamilton presented the main discourse of the meeting, offering both the North American concept of religious freedom as well as current international trends on the topic. Concluding, the American expert emphasized the importance of the existence of clear and firm legislation to insure a climate of freedom.

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Mr Mihail Dumitrescu, the parochial priest of the Greco-Catholic Cathedral, Mr Ivan Bloch, president of the Jewish Community, Mr Ioan Balan, Guardian [epitrop] of the Evangelical Church and Mr Ilie Albiciuc, Archpriest  [protopop]of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church each stated that good relationships currently exist between churches; they maintained that the city of Lugoj had not seen any violations of religious freedom. However, it would be necessary and beneficial to have a law that would insure the framework of freedoms and rights for all religions, stressed Mr Ionel Soponariu, Treasurer of the SDA in Banat.

Read more at the Northwest Religious Liberty Association webpage.

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