Paper short abstract:

The number of prophets/prophetesses (divine messengers) always increased when living in social crises. I analyze twenty-four religious specialists’ reactions to uncertainty in East-Central Europe from the 17th century to the present. I combine anthropological interpretation with historical analysis.

Paper long abstract:

I performed anthropological fieldwork among new religious movements founded by charismatic religious leaders in Romania, Serbia, and Hungary since 2007. During the last few years, I extended my research on their historical backgrounds, roots, and parallels. I found that vernacular prophethood forms a discernable kind of religious specialist in this region, whose numbers rapidly increase during the social crises (attacks against political sovereignty, social tensions, totalitarianism). I read the available scholarly and primer sources of these folk/vernacular prophets/prophetesses from the 17th century till the present. I found nine women and fifteen men who were called and considered 'proféta' (both male and female in Hungarian) by their social environment (and in most cases by themselves, too). I found only men in the 17th century while women outnumbered men by far during the 20th century. First, I briefly introduce these emblematic folk/vernacular prophets/prophetesses from the last 400 years. Then, as a theoretical contextualization, I briefly analyze the social functions of “prophethood” as a phenomenon (mediators chosen by God for expressing its divine messages) and compare it to other religious specialists like seers, religious healers, visionaries, fortunetellers, founders of religions, etc. The objective of my paper is to outline the similarities and differences between these twenty-four prophets and prophetesses, from the perspective of their reaction to the social crises and their role during these uncertain times. I analyze how they reacted to the radical changes in society, the upsurge of secularism, the collapse of religious institutions, wars, survival strategies during totalitarian regimes, etc.