For the moment (for the present) it is unjust to speak of we can't speak about a Romanian school of history of religion, in the post-communist Romania, on account of the cultural isolation and of the ideological prohibitions in the period between 1945 and 1989, despite the presence in the international scientific community of two major representatives, Mircea Eliade and Ioan Petru Culianu. On the other hand, even within the Romanian culture there is the affirmation of the acute need of a historical and a religious discourse on religion, parallel and autonomous in relation with the theological one.

But the establishing of such an analytical and (hermeneutical) interpretative discourse would become possible mainly through the institutionalization of this discipline in Romania’s universities, the more so as (especially as) it already has a long tradition in the programs of the European and American universities. Then, to avoid the trap of falling into the “form without substance” model, which returns in the Romanian education in the periods of transition or crisis, such an institutionalization should be accompanied not only by the stimulation and the actualization of the fundamental research, but by the spreading (diffusion) of the specialty literature (through the translation of the more important works) and the forming of a network-type local research center (through the collaboration of the ones interested in the history of religion inside the framework of some magazines). We salute at this point the presence of the periodicals Archaeus. Studii de istorie a religiilor (edited by the Centre of History of Religion, University of Bucharest) and Origini. Caiete silvane. Revistă de studii culturale (edited by the Center for Traditional Culture Zalău and the “Origini” Association). We believe that periodicals like these can contribute both to the configuring of networks of specialists in the science of religion and to the coagulation (curdling) of the horizon of expectance of the readers, activating the need of historical and religious research and stimulating the development of the critical attitude in this domain. Since, it needs to be told, in Romania historical and religious studies are being written, more or less consistent, but mainly they remain hidden (“occult”) in other types of periodicals(historical, ethnological and anthropological, historical and philosophical, theological etc.), on account of the ancillary status of this scientific domain in the Romanian system of university disciplines. The comparative history of religion is an introductive discipline, parasited in our scientific world by connected domains (antique, medieval and modern history, archeology, ethnology, anthropology, philosophy, literary critics and history, the history of arts, theology, sociology, psychology etc.) more or less in a “fiddler’s” manner. This fact demonstrates the autochthonous cultural need of a historical and religious discourse, but a need insufficiently upheld by a strong (to measure/order) critical consciousness and by a rigorous methodology, adequate in respect of the researched object.

The project of this historical and religious periodical tries to support both the formation of an interdisciplinary network of specialists interested in the research of the religious phenomenon- the more so as the epistemic situs of the history of religion is extremely opened to the neighboring and related domains-and the institutionalization of the history of religion as an autonomous discipline in the Romanian university system.