Mihail Neamțu

This best-seller tells three stories of love. At the International Gaudeamus Book Fest held in Bucharest (18–20 Nov 2016), a plethora of writers, journalists, diplomats or theologians hailed this essay. Dr Adrian Papahagi praised the author for being 'capable to decipher the sacred halo of agape within the filigree of the profane love. The fiction of the archetypal child, Mowgli, mesmerised by Shanti, is combined with the story between the teenagers, Mihnea and Dora. Both stories lead to the climactic end exposed in the letter of two Eastern European intellectuals (Dinu and Nelli Pillat). A book of admirable encounters that can easily make you fall in love with them.'

In 2013, the New Republic Party became member of the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists. As president of the New Republic Party, Neamțu worked with various members of the European Parliament, such as the British MEP Daniel Hannan and former prosecutor Monica Macovei.

Faith and Reason. Conversations, Contradictions, Mediation, 2013.

By mid-July 2012, Neamțu became actively involved in helping Traian Băsescu, former President of Romania, to prevent his impeachment. Like Băsescu, he was also against the Bucharest Mosque.

On 17 September 2011, Neamțu published a political manifesto calling for the establishment of ‘a New Republic’. In his foundational document, he said that the citizens of the free world should enter an age of personal responsibility, while politicians should fully grasp, in quasi-Burkean fashion, the meaning of a ‘trans-generational accountability’. The New Republic Party also called for the spiritual renewal of the Western civilization by restoring the moral dignity of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The movement reached its peak when thousands of individuals registered as members in forty national constituencies.

Zeitgeist. Cultural Patterns and Ideological Conflicts, 2010.

The Verb as Photography. Cultural dissidents and political commentaries, 2009.

The Conservative elegies. East-European Reflections on Religion and Society, 2009.

Memory, Humanism and Meaning. Essays in honor of Andrei Pleșu’s sixtieth anniversary, offered by NEC alumni & friends, Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2009, edited together with Bogdan Tătaru-Cazaban.

A Philosophy of Distance. In Honorem Andrei Pleșu, Bucharest, Humanitas Publishing house, 2009, coordinated together with Bogdan Tătaru-Cazaban.

In 2008, Neamțu defended his doctoral dissertation at King's College London. His unpublished thesis looks at various points of theological convergence between the supporters of the Nicene Creed and the leaders of the Christian monastic movement in fourth-century Egypt. Neamțu claimed that the Church bishops gathered at Nicene offered a paradoxical understanding of the consubstantial relationship between the Father and the Son, which subverted the Master and Slave dialectics so rampant in the pagan world (as it is described by Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit). The Nicene Creed gives meaning to the monastic appropriation of Christian discipleship.

‘The Theologico-Political Constitution of Monastic Liturgy,’ in Adrian Pabst and Christoph Schneider (ed.), Encounter between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy. Transfiguring the World through the Word (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 249–270.

‘Liturgical Orality or Textualist Oblivion? A Case-Study: Printing the Scriptures into Romanian (16th–18th century), St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, vol. 52 (2008) 3–4: 367–88.

‘Between the Gospel and the Nation: Dumitru Stăniloae’s Ethno-Theology,’ Archæus. Studies in the History of Religions, vol. 10 (2006) 3: 9–46.

‘Revisiting Orthodoxy and Nationalism,’ Pro Ecclesia, vol. 15 (2006) 2: 153–160.

Neamțu's first popular book (published in 2005 under the title The Owl Among the Ruins and nominated for a national debut award) looks at the ambivalent relationship between the Church and the State before and after the collapse of Communism. The author outlines the moral differences between the Polish Catholic Church under Wojciech Jaruzelski and the Romanian Orthodox Church under the political regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Mihai Neamțu was also among the first Christian writers to tackle the question of collaboration between the Secret Police (Securitate) and the clergy. The book also looks at the spiritual needs of the youth (including the representatives of the Roma community) in the age of consumerism.

‘Protology of Language in St Gregory of Nyssa,’ Khora. Revue d’études patristiques et médiévales, vol. 1 (2003) 1: 51–78.

In 2002, Neamțu completed his Master of Arts research at Durham University, with his dissertation "Theology and Language in St Gregory of Nyssa" written under the supervision of Andrew Louth. The same year, he embarked on a doctoral research at King's College London, where he worked with Colin Gunton and Professor Oliver Davies.

Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery. Essay on the nature of theology, 1999. Jean-Luc Marion, The Cross of the Visible, 2000. John Behr, The Way to Niceea, 2004. Hugo Tristram Engelhardt Jr., The Foundations of Christian Bioethics, 2005.

In 1996, at the age of 17, he won the First Prize in the National Contest for Philosophy. In his undergraduate studies, Neamțu acquired an elementary knowledge of Greek and Latin, while being drawn to German hermeneutics and French phenomenology.

On 21 December 1989, on the western frontier of Romania with Hungary, Mihail's father directly faced the lethal threats of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s army, made of gunmen, soldiers, tanks, and military trucks. This left a lasting impression on Mihail's political imagination. Since then, he saw liberty ‘as the most important gift in life’.

Mihail Neamțu (Romanian pronunciation: [mihaˈil ˈne̯amtsu], born 1978) is a Romanian conservative politician. He received a PhD in theology from King's College London and has written several books on politics, religion and culture.

Born in 1978 in Făgăraș, a city at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, Mihail Neamțu had a first-hand experience of communism, an ideology which he often described in harsh pejorative terms. His mother, Emilia, was a school teacher and his father, Gheorghe, was a computer engineer. Neamțu also has a brother, who is a painter. Early on in his life, his paternal grandfather introduced him to the elaborate rituals of Orthodox Christianity, which included a morning Easter service, as well as an exposition of the biblical teachings about life and death.