Case study 2

At the beginning of the 20th century the Serbian Orthodox Church was socially privileged, highly reputed and institution of major national and cultural importance. Under the 1903 Constitution of the Kingdom of Serbia Eastern Orthodoxy was proclaimed official religion, religious training was obligatory in schools, national holidays were marked by religious services and the clergy paid by the state like other public servants. Eastern Orthodoxy and the Serbian Orthodox Church were parts of official culture meant to legitimize the system. This “stimulating ideally-emblematic pattern” persisted till the end of the WWI and establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (SHS) “though this period beneficial to the Serbian Orthodox Church may seem to have lasted till the outbreak of World War II” (Blagojević, 2005:157).

By consent of the Constantinople Patriarchate that had jurisdiction over eparchies in Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the so-called Old Serbia the Serbian Orthodox Church managed to be officially unified in 1920. Its traditionally privileged standing in kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro had already been eliminated under the Corfu Declaration in 1917 and especially King Alexander’s proclamation of 1919 guaranteeing equality to all religions in the Kingdom of SHS.

The St. Vitus Constitution of 1921 proclaimed the principle of religious freedoms and ensured equality of all religious communities in theory, and declared all religious communities institutions with special privileges and positions.

„ESTABLISHMENT’’ OF SPIRITUAL JURISDICTION

Establishment of the Kingdom of SHS on December 1, 1918 put under one umbrella almost all the parts of the once Peć Patriarchate, one of the Serbian Orthodox Church’s parishes out of which only the Archbishopric of Serbia was autonomous. Only Zadar, Skadar and Buda, as well as a large part of the Timisoara Eparchy remained beyond the borders of the new state and, hence, of the united Serbian Orthodox Church (Slijepčević, 2002a:4). The Peć Patriarchate dismantled in 1766 was placed under the jurisdiction of the Constantinople Patriarchate, while some parts of the Church organization were functioning in different sociopolitical circumstances, were differently organized and disunited.

The Serbia-seated Serbian Church became autonomous in 1878 in the status of the Belgrade Archbishopric. The Holy Archbishopric Assembly that included all the bishops in Serbia and was chaired by the Archbishop of Belgrade and the Metropolitan of Serbia was the highest spiritual authority.

The locally-based church in Vojvodina, Slavonia and Croatia was an heir of the once Archbishopric of Krušedol, the autonomous diocese within the Peć Patriarchate; later on it got the status of the Karlovac Archbishopric headed by a metropolitan. When the Serbian Dukedom was proclaimed in 1848 a metropolitan was declared a patriarch, and a regimental colonel a duke.

When Montenegro was proclaimed a princedom in 1852 and church and state authorities separated, the locally-based Serbian church in Montenegro became the Cetinje Archbishopric that included the Raška-Zahumlje Eparchy and the renewed Peć Eparchy.

As of 1766 the locally-based Serbian Church in Bosnia-Herzegovina had been under the jurisdiction of the Constantinople Patriarchate. Four organizational wholes were functioning: Dabrobosnian, Zahumlje-Herzegovina and Zvornik-Tuzla bishoprics and an autonomous eparchy of Banjaluka-Bihać.

As for the Serbian Church based in Dalmatia and Boka Kotorska it had the status of the Bukovina Archbishopric, while the Holy Archbishopric Assembly was convening in Vienna once Franz Joseph I approved it.

As of 1766 the Serbian Church locally based in Old Serbia and Macedonia had been under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople; these regions were integrated into the Kingdom of Serbia after Second Balkan War.

Already in late January 1918 representatives of all parts of the Serbian Orthodox Church held a conference in Sremski Karlovci and began preparing the terrain for unification of all dioceses. Bishops’ decision on unification of the Serbian Orthodox Church was proclaimed by Regent Alexander on June 17, 1920. The Serbian patriarch was officially named “the Serbian Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church of the Kingdom of SHS” (Slijepčević, 2002:375). The Holy Archbishopric Assembly of the united Serbian Orthodox Church elected Metropolitan of Serbia Dimitrije Pavlović the first Patriarch of the renewed Serbian Patriarchy on November 12, 1920.

SERBIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH: BETWEEN THE IDEAL OF HARMONY AND
THE ACTUAL CESAREAN-PAPACY

Election of the first Patriarch of the united Serbian Orthodox Church proved the longtime tradition in the relationship between the state and the Serbian Orthodox Church ever since the latter was proclaimed autonomous. The government did not acknowledge originally elected Holy Archbishopric Assembly but issued a decree on election of a first patriarch of the united Serbian Orthodox Church providing the Election Assembly authorized to elect one of three candidates for the offices, nominated by the Holy Archbishopric Assembly. Apart from bishops and priests the Election Assembly included many high governmental officials, and had no clear-cut criteria for members’ religious affiliation (Slijepčević, 2002:376). Dimša Perić’s observations also testified of the state’s traditional attitude towards the Serbian Orthodox Church: throughout Patriarch Dimitrije’s lifetime (1846-1930), the Holy Archbishopric Assembly had never discussed the election of a patriarch (Perić, 1999:210).

The principle of harmony in the state-church relationship was taken over from Byzantium, and St. Sava incorporated it into his ecclesiastical law or canon (Nomokanon). However, an insight into the history of state-church relationship indicates that the harmony was more of an ideal than a reality.

Back at the time of the second metropolitan of the autonomous Serbian Church it was obvious that the state assumed the role of unquestionable interlocutor in the dialogue with the Church. Invoking the power structure (Ustrojenije) the Princedom of Serbia interested in religious authorities – the state, or more precisely Prince Miloš, had verified, rather unwillingly and with delay, Metropolitan Petar Jovanović was forced to resign in January 1859 when negotiations on the status of the clergy under the Police Law failed.

His successor Metropolitan Mihailo was excluded from the debate on the Law of Church Authorities that annulled Ustrojenije (enacted in 1847). The Law provided state control over functioning of all religious bodies and invested the Minister of Education and Religious Activities with considerable authorities.

After they together managed to get the act (Tomos) on autonomy from the Constantinople Patriarchate on October 20, 1879, on the basis of the Berlin Congress decisions, spiritual and secular authorities locked horns with each other: Metropolitan Mihailo was relying on Russia where he had finished his education, while Serbia’s foreign policy was turning towards Austria. The crisis in their relationship was manifest especially when the King put his signature under the Tax Law without consent from the Holy Bishopric Assembly, the Belgrade Bishopric and Metropolitan Mihailo; it further deepened when the Metropolitan refused to divorce King Milan and Queen Natalia because there were no canonic reasons for dissolving their marriage. On October 18, 1881 King Milan signed a decree whereby the Metropolitan was “discharged from the administration of Belgrade and Serbian bishoprics.”

Having amended and supplemented the 1882 Law the government secured even stronger influence on all church bodies, and the Election Assembly - mostly composed of secular officials – voted as one and elected Metropolitan Teodosije Mraović. Bishops who had refused to participate in the proceedings and proclaim the newly elected Metropolitan were dismissed on the same occasion.

After King Milan’s abdication the Regency discharged Metropolitan Teodosije and bishops Dimitrije and Nikanor on May 27, 1889. A day later it passed a decree that reinstalled Metropolitan Mihailo; this put an end to the years-long “non-canonic” situation.

After Metropolitan Mihailo’s death the Election Assembly elected Metropolitan Inokentije Pavlović during whose term in office canonic and “non-canonic” bishops (who had sided with Metropolitan Teodosije) reconciled. At the ceremony of crowning King Peter Karađorđević in 1904 Metropolitan Inokentije managed to restore the coronation tradition. “No conflict with the state occurred during his era: mostly everything was done as the state said” (Perić, 1999: 190).

The last head of the autonomous Serbian Bishopric – after Metropolitan Inokentije’s death – was elected by a repeat vote and “in boiling atmosphere” (Perić, 1999:191) on August 18, 1905. Metropolitan Dimitrije’s term in office will be remembered by a scandal in the People’s Assembly that led to retirement of Bishop Nikanor and, of course, even more by Balkan Wars and the WWI. Together with the government and the army the Metropolitan set out through Albanian calvary; Metropolitan of Peć Gavrilo Dožić stayed in his seat and was imprisoned in Hungary throughout wartime.

SERBIAN ORTHORDOX CHURCH IN THE KINGDOM OF SHS/YUGOSLAVIA

At the end of World War I the Serbian Orthodox Church faced huge losses in human lives and material goods. Out of 3,000 priests at the outbreak of the war, 1,056 died or were missing – all in all, more than one third of its clergy (Slijepčević, 2002:374). Already in 1920 the Church lost vast lands in the agrarian reform; many of these confiscated grounds had not been registered to their new owners so the Church was obliged to pay taxes on them for years.

The newly established state was multi-religious. According to the 1921 census, 46.8% of the population were Orthodox, 39.4% Catholics and 10.9% Muslims.

On January 6, 1919 Regent Alexander issued a proclamation banning the privileged status of the Serbian Orthodox Church and making of recognized religions equal.

The Constitution of the Kingdom of SHS declared in 1921 on St. Vitus Day adopted the principles of the Corfu Declaration on equality of all religions or, more precisely, the seventh article of this document: all recognized religions shall be manifested freely and publicly. The Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim religion with the bulk of believers were proclaimed mutually equal and equal vis-à-vis the state.

Article 16 of the Decree on Centralization of Executive and Judicial Powers in the Serbian Patriarchy providing that “all provisions of special laws and autonomous degrees of the Church contrary to this Decree shall be annulled” (Slijepčević, 2002:377) repeated the provisions applicable to the Serbian Orthodox Church in the Kingdom of Serbia, i.e. before unification. The Decree on the Ministry of Religions passed on June 1919 placed the Serbian Orthodox Church under the state control in all of its religiously-political activities if the latter were invested in the state; Article 3 of the said document invested the Minister of Religions with “all executive powers” in Serbia and Montenegro (Slijepčević, 2002:378).

After the Synod’s numerous appeals against the Minister’s interventions into the existing agreement, the government passed the Law on the Serbian Orthodox Church on November 8, 1929. The Church’s properties, funds and legacies remained under the supervision of the state that retained the right to expropriate remaining properties of the Church, while the King maintained in his hold the right to veto the elected bishops and the Patriarch; the Ministry of Justice continued to supervise autonomy of the Church’s schools, i.e. to decide on their establishment and curricula. The Law on the Election of the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church enacted on April 6, 1930 was an actual copy of the 1920 Decree on the Election of the First Serbian Patriarch and made sure that the ruler and the state could considerably influence his election. The state, nevertheless met some of the Church demands: the Church was granted continued financial assistance, its official correspondence was freed from postal taxes while Eastern Orthodox believers were freed from paying the so-called patriarchal taxes.

A new constitution of the Serbian Orthodox Church was enacted on November 24, 1931. It incorporated the provisions on the election of bishops and the Patriarch, while all clerks working for church offices and institutions had to pledge loyalty to the King like other public servants. The Patriarch was in the membership of the Crown Council and was granted privileges in accordance with his high office. This privileged position mirrored the old tradition of the Serbian state in which a patriarch was second to a king and held in high esteem. At the Minister of Justice’s proposal and with the Patriarch’s and the Ministerial Council’s consent, the King appointed 12 lay persons to the Patriarchal Management Board, which stood for “the highest legislative representation in the Church management’s dealing with the outside world” (Slijepčević, 2002:382).

It was only in 1933 that the problem of religious teaching was solved by the Law on Religious Teaching in secondary and teachers’ schools. Until the outbreak of the WWII all correspondence between the Serbian Orthodox Church with natural persons and institutions abroad went through the Foreign Ministry. This policy, inherited from the Kingdom of Serbia, applied just to the SPC; other religious communities were free and uncontrolled in their international correspondence (Perić, 1999:212).

CONFLICTS BETWEEN SPIRITUAL AND SECULAR POWERS IN THE KINGDOM
OF YUGOSLAVIA

The Serbian Orthodox Church has come into open conflict with the state several times. Firstly on March 24, 1930, shortly after the death of Patriarch Dimity, when the King “sub rosa and behind the Synod’s back” put his signature under the above-mentioned Law on the Election of the Patriarch of SPC. The Holy Synod, chaired by Metropolitan of Montenegro and Seaside Gavrilo Dožić responded strongly to the Law and called for its amendment. A day before the scheduled electoral assembly the Synod resigned collectively, and the King and the government decided to amend the disputable provision and accept the SPC assembly’s proposals. Out of three candidates selected by the electoral assembly the King appointed Metropolitan of Skopje Varnava the Patriarch.

The biggest conflict between the two broke out over a concordat. The government drafted the concordat in agreement with Vatican and without any consultation with the (majority) Serbian Orthodox Church; the People’s Assembly voted it in on July 23, 1937, and Patriarch Varnava died on the following night. Several days before the vote on the disputed agreement took place a procession praying for the Patriarch’s recovery, supported by the opposition, broke out into mass protests known in history as “bloody procession.” The Serbian Orthodox Church excommunicated all orthodox ministers and MPs who had voted for the concordat, while the state imposed censorship on the Synod’s releases. The crises over the concordat resulted in a breakup of all contacts between the Church and the Kingdom. It was only in February 1938 that the state had to guarantee in writing that the concordat would not be made legal, that the SPC would be consulted thenceforwards and all the victims of the concordat crisis amnestied; following an electoral assembly the regency issued a decree whereby Metropolitan Gavrilo was appointed the Patriarch.

Establishment of Banat of Croatia as an autonomous territorial unit within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was also a hotbed of new conflicts between the Serbian Orthodox Church and the state; it was only due to the upcoming world war that these crises did not grow as fierce as the concordat crisis was. The Cvetković-Maček Agreement whereby a considerable part of the SPC jurisdiction was bestowed on Banat of Croatia was seen as yet another attack at Eastern Orthodoxy and the Serbian entity in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The Synod’s Christmas encyclical in 1940 testifies of seriousness and significance the Church attached to this document. “The Holy Synod is aware that rearrangements do cause disturbance and injustice, as cries of dissatisfaction are reaching it from all sides; however, the Holy Synod believes that all this situation could not and would not persist, as it feels strongly confident that Serbian bloodshed for creation and size of this motherland, the people’s and state unity was not shed in vain; it believes that lives sacrificed for all brother Serbs, Croats and Slovenes could not be despised but that equality and freedom for every brother in the motherland has been earned in a superhuman endeavor.” (Slijepčević, 2002:383).

At the onset of the WWII, on April 23, 1934, Gestapo arrested Patriarch Gavrilo in the Monastery of Ostrog. Bishops who managed to avoid the hardship assembled in Belgrade, and headed by Metropolitan of Skopje Joseph organized functioning of the Holy Synod under existing circumstances.

SERBIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH IN YUGOSLAVIA AFTER WORLD WAR II

The end of the WWII found the Serbian Orthodox Church with destroyed organizational structure, one fourth of total clergy dead or missing, and huge material and financial loss. Out of over 4,200 churches and chapels, as well as 220 monasteries, 330 churches, 49 chapels and 17 monasteries were destroyed during the WWII, and as many as 335 churches, 23 chapels and 17 monasteries seriously damaged. Biggest destructions took place on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia /NDH/ (Radić, 1995:125).

The Serbian Orthodox Church found itself in the worst material situation since unification: almost all sources of income had been exhausted, subventions and taxes (patriarchal, bishopric and municipal) annulled, funds destroyed and lands that remained in the Church’s ownership after the agrarian reform in 1920 become subject to another agrarian reform; 70,000 hectares of lands and forests were expropriated from the Church, and 1,180 church buildings nationalized (Slijepčević, 2002a:170). Metropolitan Joseph and the Holy Synod refused to negotiate on the Church’s position in the absence of the Patriarch. Therefore, in mid-November 1946 the government of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia decided to enable Patriarch Gavrilo’s homecoming.

The FPR of Yugoslavia’s constitution passed on January 31, 1946 proclaimed separation between religious communities and the state. The Synod’s appeal for maintenance of sacrament of matrimony was not taken into consideration in drafting the constitution.

Article 25 providing church-state separation was conveyed to a new constitution declared on January 13, 1956.

The newly established political system soon demonstrated its negative attitude towards religion and religious communities by passing a set of systemic regulations that marginalized, de-monopolized, de-politicized and economically further weakened all religious organizations throughout the country, including the Serbian Orthodox Church. Church-state separation, secularized education, ban on religious training in public schools, as well as exclusion of the Theological Faculty from the Belgrade University (1952) directly undermined the Church’s and religion’s economic, political and cultural influence on the population (Blagojević, 2005:160). This post-war “administrative type of state policy” was characterized by controversy or conflict between state-party bureaucracy and religious communities, and measures whereby the state was trying to dwindle influence of the Church inasmuch as possible; it managed to accomplish all this pretty soon, and placed the Church under its supervision and control (Blagojević, 2005:165-166).

The entire period 1945-70 can be divided into two stages: 1. 1953-54, open governmental repression against religious communities on the one hand, and their open resistance; and 2. from mid-2950s till mid-1960s, mutual adjustments and search for a sustainable model of relations. In the second stage, after 1953-54, the pressure of ideology was weaker and weaker (Radić, 2007:285). Economic and political liberalization in mid-1960 was gradually weakening the pressure of politics on religious communities due to liberalization of the relationship between them and the state. Simultaneously, however, religious communities took a more cooperative and loyal attitude towards the socialist state.

During World War II, like on the eve of it, the Serbian Orthodox Church was looking askance at communists as it saw them as infidels; having favored the monarchy it sided with the nationalistic right-wing and Draža Mihailović’s Tchetnik movement. It manifested its preference in rituals; even after the war the King’s name was mentioned in every liturgy. The socialist state’s resolute showdown with the Tchetnik movement and monarchism after WWII deprived the Church of ideological-political backing and even subsidies.

Anti-communism permeating the Serbian Orthodox Church was most manifest in magazine “Christian Thought” which kept alerting readers to communist threat and activities of the People’s Front. Illustrative of the magazine’s stance is the editorial of the November 1939 issue headlined “Bleak Theses in the Form of an Appeal to the Church,” “a concise memorandum on spiritual-political situation of the country,” “No enemy is as dangerous to the Church today as communism. There is every reason for the Church – and mostly the spirit and sense of its existence – to start a resolute struggle against communism. The struggle must begin immediately and at all costs. The entire nation can and must be mobilized,” argues the editorial.

SHISMS IN THE SERBIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

Two schisms befell the Serbian Orthodox Church following the WWII. The first was in the case of canonically not recognized Macedonian Orthodox Church initiated back in March 1945 when the “Initiatory Committee in Skopje” called for restoration of the Ohrid Archbishopric.

The Macedonian Orthodox Church /MPC/ was formally proclaimed in early October 1958 at a popular-clerical gathering in Ohrid. First constitution of the MPC proclaimed on October 6, 1958 provides that the MPC “shall be in canonic unity with the Serbian Orthodox Church through His Holiness the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church.” In late 1966 the MPC Synod demanded to be recognized as autocephalous and that only added fuel to the fire of the relationship between the two churches. At a meeting in Belgrade Metropolitan Dositej and his bishops openly requested recognition of the autocephalous status for the Macedonian Orthodox Church. When the Holy Archbishopric Assembly of the SPC turned down this demand, the MPC held “a church-popular gathering” in Ohrid on June 19, 1967, which declared it autocephalous unilaterally. The Serbian Orthodox Church saw this religious organization as schismatic and ended every communication with it.

In the early 1960s SPC priests in diaspora began intensively criticizing their counterparts in Yugoslavia for their lenient and cooperative attitude towards the communist regime. It was in diaspora that the second schism took place; after division of the American-Canadian Eparchy, American-Canadian Bishop Dionisije was suspended for refusing to acknowledge decisions of the Holy Archbishopric Assembly on establishment of three new eparchies. Namely, after partition of the American-Canadian Eparchy was decided on, Bishop Dionisije convened the Tenth Church-People’s Assembly for November 10-14, 1963. The Assembly decided to observe not any decision, solution or instruction by the Holy Archbishopric Assembly from Belgrade as long as Yugoslavia was under the rule of communists, and declare the American-Canadian Eparchy free and independent. When the Holy Archbishopric Assembly unfrocked Bishop Dionisije and restored him to the laical order under the name Dragoljub Milivojević most church-school municipalities in Australia sided with the excommunicated bishop. For his part he convened the First Church-People’s Assembly on October 31, 1964 in Melbourne, which founded the Free Serbian Orthodox Church, Eparchy of Australia and New Zealand. The latter, its metropolitan and constitution were proclaimed in the Monastery of New Gračanica near Chicago on August 10, 1984. From 1963 till 1991 when differences were overcome, the Archbishopric of New Gračanica was at odds with the Serbian Patriarchy and called itself the Free Serbian Orthodox Church.

The Alliance of Eastern Orthodox Priests in SFRY should also be included among schismatic organizations; successor of the pre-war Alliance of Serbian Orthodox Clergy in Yugoslavia, the Alliance had deepened gaps between the lowest and highest SPC ranks for decades. It traces to 1942 in Srpska Jasenica and to be reestablished in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1946) and then registered in Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro (Slijepčević, 2002a:181). In early March 1949 294 clergymen founded the Alliance of Eastern Orthodox Priests in Federative People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, which held its first congress in mid-October 1951. According to the Alliance’s official register its membership amounted to 1,925 clergymen and it was claimed that this figure totaled 70% of Orthodox clergy in SPC (Slijepčević, 2002a:183).

The Bishopric would not accept this form of clergymen’s organization although it had been approved by the authorities. The Holy Archbishopric Assembly refused to recognize associations established in republics but called for renewal of bishopric associations which had joined the membership of the Alliance of Associations through the Alliance of Eparchies. Already in December 1947 members of the Association (the alliance to be) were critical of clericalism while calling for democratization of church administration. Later on, the Association demanded revision of SPC Constitution declared that year, along with the entire church legislation. As it was to be expected, the Alliance, itself not recognized by SPC, sided with also not recognized Macedonian Orthodox Church.

The Alliance of Eastern Orthodox Priests formed by clergymen that have been in the partisan movement was very hostile to the Bishopric (Marković, 2005:168), wherein “none of SPC bishops, alive at the time, had sympathy for partisan struggle” (Slijepčević, 2002a:189). The Alliance closed down in 1990.

A polemic over an autocephalous orthodox church in Montenegro was opened in 1998. The very initiative, seen in the above-mentioned context, could be tracked down to a resolution a part of the clergy that remained in Montenegro adopted at their assembly in June 1945. Instead of the Serbian Orthodox Church the resolution quotes the Orthodox Church accusing SPC of “pan-Serbian chauvinistic ideas.” It also called for “a democratic church organization” (Slijepčević, 2002a:101).

CONSEQUENCES OF ATHEIZATION

Taking into account findings of the post-war census in 1953, which has a rubric for religious affiliation one can conclude that atheization process had not been exactly efficient at first: 88 percent of total population said they were believers and only 12 percent called themselves unreligious or atheist.

The census indicated differences between republics, later on to be confirmed in empirical researches of religiousness and people’s attitudes towards religion: smallest percentage of unbelievers was in Montenegro – along with the biggest percentage of nonbelievers (32%). In comparison with other parts of the country the percentage of nonbelievers was also high in Belgrade (29.5) while most believers were inhabitants of Kosovo and Metohija, and Slovenia (Blagojević, 2005:168).

Considering methodological limitations or the fact that no comparable synthetic indicator of religiousness is available (a scale or an index), findings of systemic researches of religiousness in socialist Yugoslavia, which are by far more related to Catholicism, provide an overview of basic tendencies of specific confessional areas. As early as in 1964 about 70 percent of total population said they were religious, and some 30 percent did not specify their creeds (nonreligious or atheists). By the end of this decade, in 1968, findings of a public opinion poll showed that nonreligious persons were in the majority; 51 percent of interviewees said they were atheists, and 39 percent believers. Researchers conducted led to the conclusion that in comparison with predominantly Catholic, Islamic or religiously mixed areas conventional religiousness in predominantly Orthodox regions such as the so-called Serbia proper (without two provinces) and Montenegro was spiraling down. Later researches conducted in the 1970s also confirmed this conclusion (Blagojević, 2005:169-170).

Because of people’s evidently record-breaking breakup with religion and the Serbian Orthodox Church in orthodox homogeneous (Montenegro and Serbia proper) or multi-religious region (Vojvodina and Croatia) Orthodoxy became less important as a signpost of morality or driving force of human behavior, and less and less people were attending religious ceremonies of participating in church life generally (Blagojević, 2005:174).

In his Christmas and Easter encyclicals in 1970 Patriarch German also alerted of “sudden and horrible breakup with religion” and “declining religiousness” (Slijepčević, 2002a:143).

However, in parallel with evidently growing political and economic crises of Yugoslav socialist system in the 1980s people’s religiousness was changing even in confessionaly homogeneous regions in Serbia and Montenegro. Despite numerous methodological limitations public option polls conducted at the time provide a relatively reliable insight into this trend. By the end of this decade researches conducted on a sample of youth population show the average of 34 percent of religious interviewees, which, when compared with findings of the youth-focused polls in Central Serbia in 1974 (11 percent of religious) or a year later (17 percent) estimates the average of youth religiousness at 26 percent. Interestingly, youth religiousness in Vojvodina amounted to 34 and in Kosovo at even 48 percent (Blagojević, 2005:224).

The public opinion polls conducted in mid-1990 showed that the difference between though still minority religious interviewees and the rest was drastically reduced but that already detected consistencies of different levels of religiousness in different territorial-national areas remained. Most religious population was in Kosovo (67%), then in Slovenia (58), Macedonia (51), Croatia (46) and Montenegro (39). On this sample 84 percent of interviewees specified their religious affiliation; as it was to be expected, the most religious population in the earlier period now mostly identified themselves with Orthodoxy: 91 percent of Montenegrins specified their religion, more than Albanians (90 percent) and Croats (86), as well as Serbs and Macedonians (86 percent each) (Blagojević, 2005:226).

The poll testified of a high level of people’s identification with religions appropriate to their nation, and showed a higher percentage of believers among members of national minorities than among the majority population in local communities or among their compatriots in “mother” republics. Such was the case of, say, Serbs in Kosovo, Albanians in Macedonia, Muslims in Serbia and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This was to be ascribed to homogenizing roles of different religions of particular peoples. Revival of religiousness in the early 1990s was most manifest in Orthodoxy considering that people have been distancing themselves from religious-church complex for decades (Blagojević, 2005:229).

Following the rise in the 1980s in the early 1990s conventional religiousness in socialist Yugoslavia, measured by indicator of self-estimation, reached its maximum. Confessional self-identification of all nations in Yugoslavia was high and regularly amounted to more than 80 percent.

By making indicators more precise it is obvious that conventional religiousness cannot be measured only by conventional self-identification and self-declared religiousness. According to public opinion polls 83.5 percent of interviewees in Central Serbia self-declared themselves Orthodox, almost 30 percent said they were religious and 20 percent claimed they believed in God; only 3.8 percent of interviewees go to church once a week (Blagojević, 2005:230).

SERBIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH AS A “COUNTER-SECULARIZATION ACTIVIST”

The year 1982 – and especially “Appeal” signed by 21 clergymen and addressed Serbia and Yugoslavia’s highest authorities, the Holy Archbishopric Assembly and the Synod - is usually quoted in literature as the year when the Serbian Orthodox Church made a comeback. “Appeal” alerted of the necessity to protect spiritual and biological being of Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija (Radić, 2002:303). Primary and initial sociopolitical context of this comeback was a political crisis manifested in well-known events in Kosovo a year before. Further encouraged by the growingly deeper political and economic crisis of the Yugoslav socialist system, the Serbian Orthodox Church – louder and louder, and more and more frequently – was raising the question of Kosovo as a political topic No. 1, along with that of Serbs’ position in other parts of Yugoslavia, especially in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Kosovo became a regular topic in all newspapers issued by the Serbian Orthodox Church. Most prominent among several outstanding authors was the then monastic Atanasije Jevtić, whose articles were given more and more prominent place in official church papers in the years to come. Speaking of his known articles one should surely mention the one titled “From Kosovo and about Kosovo” (1982) on extermination of the Serbian people on the territory of Serbia’s south province; the feuilleton (late 1983) “From Kosovo to Jadovno” that draws parallels between Serbs’ hardships in various parts of Yugoslavia, text “Kosovo Pledge” (1987), an article published in installments (1987) under the headline “Serbs in Kosovo on Baptism Day – A Bleak Calendar – Kosovo Chronicle of Serbs’ Suffering by the Hand of Shiptar Oppressors, published from October 1988 throughout 1989, etc. Archive materials illustrated with photos of crimes committed against Serb population were regularly published in the above-mentioned period. A press release by the Holy Archbishopric Assembly issued in 1987 was the first to use the term genocide to refer to what was going on with Serbian population in Kosovo and parts of Southeast Serbia.

Throughout 1988 and within preparations for marking the 600th anniversary of Battle of Kosovo – according to highest church officials, one of most important events in Serbia’s modern history – bodily remnants of Prince Lazar were carried from the Monastery of Ravanica all the way to the Monastery of Gračanica in Kosovo. The epistle by Bishop of Sabac-Valjevo Jovan on the occasion of the arrival of Prince Lazar’s mortal remains in Kosovo refers to the term “heavenly Serbia.” The anniversary of Battle of Kosovo was also marked in Dalmatia Kosovo, Mt. Romanija and in Drvar.

Ever since 1984 and in parallel with the prevalent topic of Kosovo SPC papers had been publishing stories about Serbs’ hardship in Independent State of Croatia /NDH/ and especially in the Jasenovac concentration camp. These stories started with sanctification of the Jasenovac church when Patriarch German appealed for forgiveness though not for oblivion. In the second half of the 1980s stories about present-day threats to Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina began accompanying those about genocide in the WWII. Releases about difficult, “almost occupying conditions” of SPC in Croatia and Slovenia were issued twice throughout 1990.

The May 1990 meeting of the Holy Archbishopric Assembly addressed relevant governmental institutions demanding excavation of mortal remains of those killed in the WWII so that they could be buried with dignity. Reports from Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina on burial services victims of genocide, excavations of their bones and interments in were published throughout the year. The practice was intensified in 1991, the year the Archbishopric Assembly designated for liturgical marking of the 10th anniversary of SPC hardship and genocide against its flock. Victims of Ustashi terror in Bosnia-Herzegovina were being buried throughout that year: in Žitomislić, Prebilovci, Ljubinje, Trebinje, Majevica, Banjaluka, etc.

The May 1991 meeting of the Holy Archbishopric Assembly discussed, among other topics, the situation in the so-called SAO (Serbian Autonomous Region of) Krajina and Croatia and called its flock to help those expelled from Croatia. It also appealed to “all Serbs” to behave “soberly and humanly” should larger conflicts brake out.

In October 1991 Patriarch Pavle wrote to Lord Carrington, the president of the International Conference on Yugoslavia, claiming that because genocide committed against Serbs in Croatia in the past and ongoing developments in this republic Serbs could not possibly remain within any independent Croatia but have to share a roof over their heads with Serbia and all Serb krajinas. “It is high time to understand that genocide victims and their former and probably future executioners could not possibly live side by side.” A similar letter was also addressed to the chairman and all participants of the Peace Conference in The Hague in early November. A delegation of the Assembly’s extraordinary session paid visits to Vice-President of Yugoslavia’s Presidency Dr. Branko Kostić and Serbia’s President Slobodan Milošević to demand them not to allow the Presidency or representatives of Serbia and Montenegro to have, either in The Hague or anywhere else, “the most tragic solution to their issue” imposed on the Serbian people.

Metropolitan of Zagreb-Ljubljana Jovan, Bishop of Srem Vasilije, Bishop Stefan and Bishop of Osijek-Dalj-Baranja Lukijan visited the training center for Serb volunteers in Erdut. A meeting with their commander Željko Ražnjatović Arkan released that “the Holy Synod of SPC advocates a peaceful solution but not at the detriment of the Serb people, once again a target for Ustashi crimes.” A report on the meeting quotes that church representatives were “especially pleased to learn that the training center keeps the tradition of the Serbian people not in order to fuel nationalism but to awaken Eastern Orthodoxy that has been choked for decades.”

“THERE CAN BE NO STRONG STATE WITHOUT A STRONG CHURCH”

In the editorial published on the occasion of St. Vitus Day in 1989 the Voice of Church publication expounded its “Draft Serbian Church-National Program” saying among other things, “The fact remains that over the past two years relationship between the Serbian Church and Serbian politics has changed as much as it had not in half a century from the war onwards. We could not have expected more for the time being. However, we should not call it a day. One should not be afraid or shy of the Church, which has been a pillar of the Serbian nation for centuries. The Serbian Church does not want to be a partner to the state nor it want a share in its politics – not now as it never has. This is alien to its spirituality. Although it is not supportive of any sociopolitical order or a party, the Church cannot be completely apolitical. Therefore, we ask the Serbian political leadership that advocates a program for building of a democratic European state to make it possible for the Church to resume the role that had been unfairly and violently seized from it and so fill the social gap its neglect had opened. For, there can be no strong state without a strong church!” Church papers were more and more frequently publishing stories in favor of activities by the Serbian leadership.

A press release issued after a meeting between members of the Holy Archbishopric Synod and President of the SR of Serbia Presidency in mid June 1990 says, among other things, “We are pleased to say that the meeting between the leader of a new Serbia and Serbian bishops, members of the Holy Archbishopric Synod, will prove that a difficult and ugly period in the life of the Serbian Orthodox Church is over, at least in Serbia.”

In early 1990 the Christmas liturgy in the Congressional Church was broadcast live; two and a half months later Easter was celebrated “publicly and freely as a general holiday” and marked by opening of the St. Sava Temple where the first liturgy was held. That year St. Sava ball and St. Sava academy were organized for the first time after the WWII, and it was also for the first time that students of the Religious College prevented a play from being staged while the Church strongly demanded taking off the play from a repertoire; and this was what happened.

MAINTAINANCE OF JURISDICTION

The Serbian Orthodox Church and political elites came to be at odds when first peace agreements were being signed during the 1990s wars. On January 24, 1992 an extraordinary session of the Holy Archbishopric Assembly was convened when President of the Republic of Serbia Slobodan Milošević accepted Cyrus Vance’s peace plan. The meeting released, “Nobody’s deals with Serbia’s authorities that are unauthorized to represent the entire Serbian nation or with bodies of the Yugoslav federation or commanders of the Yugoslav Army oblige the Serbian people as a whole without their consent and without the blessing of their spiritual Mother, the Orthodox Church.” The release supports “the request of the people in Bosnia-Herzegovina for a life in freedom and independent political arrangement.”

Soon after, a long regular session (in May) of the Holy Archbishopric Synod gave birth to the Memorandum of the Serbian Orthodox Church whereby the latter “openly distances itself from this and such government and its leaders” because the parties in power in Serbia and Montenegro, as successors of the structure, bodies, funds and principles of the post-war communist system, stand in the way of an unbiased democratic dialogue in the society, shared responsibility and cooperation with others, and do not allow the Church to take its proper place in the society. The Memorandum also condemns crimes committed by any army whatsoever, as well as attacks at humanitarian convoys.

Throughout 1992 the Serbian Orthodox Church was distancing itself from the official policy and criticizing its promoters. Patriarch Pavle’s attendance at the ceremony of proclamation of the FR of Yugoslavia on April 27, 1992 was condemned not only within the predominant church but also outside it. The Patriarch reacted saying that was nothing but a mere protocolary event. In response, the Pravoslavlje /Eastern Orthodoxy/ magazine published the editorial under the headline “The Church is above Parties” arguing that in some cases the SPC should be represented ex officio, which means not its acknowledgment of the ruling regime. Speaking of the Church’s distancing itself from the state politics the following are most illustrative: the Patriarch’s address in front of the Congressional Church on June 14 and his attendance at the St. Vitus Day manifestation staged by the democratic opposition; editorials in Pravoslavlje, stories published in “The Voice of the Church” /Glas crkve/; the letter of support Bishop Artemije addressed to students in protest, etc. Basically, the Church was dissatisfied with the level of assistance Serbian and Montenegrin authorities were offering to the Serbian people in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Radić, 2002:331).

The ruling regime was also strongly criticized at the session of the Holy Archbishopric Synod in 1993. The same year, on the occasion of St. Vitus Day, Bishop Atanasije Jevtić delivered “appeal” against “sacrificing of Eastern Herzegovina” in negotiations with the Croatian side and in various versions of the Vance-Owen plan. The regime was being accused of lenient attitude towards the international community in the matter of “defense of interests of Serbs on the other bank of the Drina River.”

Metropolitan Amfilohije Radović’s statement given at that time best illustrates the SPC’s attitude towards territories the Serbs were living on and which have remained outside the borders of the FR of Yugoslavia, especially towards Republika Srpska. He said, “The backbone of those united lands is already known and is being reshaped despite all difficulties. Serbia and Montenegro make this backbone, together with Eastern Herzegovina, a part of Bosanska Krajina, Srpska Krajina…Contours of those Serbian lands has shown themselves clearly in past developments…and it was such a pity that cry and scream by Srpska Krajina have not been responded dully…”

In May 1993, addressing his flock in the Foča church Metropolitan Jovan stressed significance of the assistance the Holy Archbishopric Synod gave to Republika Srpska and local Serbs struggle for a state of their own. Metropolitan Nikolaj and bishops Vasilije and Atanasije attended the session of RS Assembly in Pale discussing the Contact Group’s peace plan for Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bishop Atanasije conveyed the SPC message to Bosnian Serbs: they should not accept to be decimated once again.

Commenting on negotiations on Bosnia-Herzegovina – precisely, on the Contact Group’s peace plan - the SPC bishopric conference of July 5, 1994 issued the “Appeal to the Serbian People and International Public.” “Fully responsible to God and our people, and to human history, we appeal to the Serbian nation to stand up and defend their centuries-old rights and freedoms, and interests that are vital to their physical and spiritual survival on their ancestral lands. As expected, bishops turned down peace-building maps and argued that people should have their say at a referendum.

The government’s decision on cutting political and economic ties with RS was the reason to convey an extraordinary session of the Holy Archbishopric Synod while the release issued by it triggered off numerous commentaries at home and abroad, including the World Council of Churches’ strong criticism for SPC nationalism. A couple of days before the session the Montenegro-Seaside Metropolitan Seat addressed Montenegrin MPs demanding them to vote against the decision the government of the FR of Yugoslavia had made.

Yet another interesting detail should be mentioned here: Patriarch Pavle’s presence at the meeting between Slobodan Milošević and Radovan Karadžić in late August 1995, and especially his signature under a disputable document authorizing Slobodan Milošević to negotiate on behalf of all Serbs caused a serious crisis in SPC and some of the clergy even called for his dethronement. The extraordinary session of the Holy Bishopric Synod on December 21-22, 1995 declared the Patriarch’s signature invalid and expressed its deep concern with the Dayton Accords. “As it circulates this release at home and to international factors and because of present dilemmas or misinterpretations – be they benevolent or malicious - the Holy Bishopric Synod also takes it its duty to let the public know that His Holiness Patriarch of Serbia’s recent signature under the agreement between representatives of the Republic of Serbia – i.e. Yugoslavia – and Republika Srpska means in no way that he or the Church as a whole support concrete initiatives by the signatories.”

The regular session of the Synod in May 1996 made the following decision, “Regardless of disintegration of Versailles-made Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Serbian Orthodox Church still holds jurisdiction over all Orthodox believers on this territory.”

A JUST WAR

The “defense war” theory was rounded off and systematized by 1996, a year after the end of armed conflicts, and presented in print at the “Second Religious-Philosophical Symposium” held in honor of St. Peter Cetinjski, “bishop and warrior.” Actually it was printed in the collection of papers titled “God’s Lamb and the Beast from Underworld: the Philosophy of War” (Jagnje Božije i zvijer iz bezdana - filozofija rata), a compilation of articles by best known theologians of SPC who had developed the “philosophy of war” in the 1990s. Probably most interesting among the authors was Bishop Atanasije who argued that some wars bring one “closer to God” and that “a war is better than a peace that separates us from God.” And, most interesting in his writing may be sections about historical responsibility. “We deny not that this was our war and wagged by Serbs. Responsible for it is Tsar Dušan who had let go Konavle, the Dubrovnik Seashore and the Island of Pelješac as much as Milošević who had betrayed the Serbs and wagged not the war he started till the end. Karadžić i Mladić are ‘mythic figures’ because they set off a holy act of war whereby ‘death enters the third millennium.’”

“ORTHODOX BELIEVERS PRAY FOR ALL BUT NOT WITH ALL”

When the common Yugoslav state was established, instead of privileged position they used to have within their prior sociopolitical frameworks Catholic and Serbian churches became equal religious communities. Characteristic of the relationship between the Roman Catholic and Serbian Orthodox churches are “innate psychological barriers” (Ver, 1991:72), i.e. multitude of inherited stereotypes on both sides. In addition to doctrinal differences between the two – about filioque and pontifex maximus most of all – it is generally hard for the Orthodox to overcome past experiences such as crusades, the Treaty of Brest-Lytovsk, Antiochian schism in the 18th century, persecution of the Orthodox Church by the Polish Catholic government between the two world wars, etc. And locally, there are experiences of hardship believers, clergy and bishoprics of the Serbian Orthodox Church suffered in the WWII on the territory of NDH and state leadership’s and the Catholic Church’s attitudes towards it marked the relationship between two religious communities throughout the second half of the 20th century.

Until the early 1960s Orthodox and Catholic clergymen barely ever communicated, let alone bishops of the two churches met (Radić, 2007:286). The Second Vatican Council (1962-65) that strengthened the ideal of ecumenism and set foundations to inter-religious dialogue placed this dialogue in Yugoslavia in a wider context. In the 1960s Pope Paul VI and Patriarch of Constantinople Atenagora met three times: in Jerusalem in 1964, in Istanbul and Rome in 1967, and on December 7, 1965 mutually annulled anathemas of 1054. It was in 1965 that the Serbian Orthodox Church joined the World Council of Churches, and in 1968 Patriarch German was elected one of its six chairpersons.

In 1964 Bishop of Djakovica and Bosnia-Srem Stjepan Baeuerlein who succeeded torchbearer of Christian unity Josip Juraj Strossmayer, founded a pastoral institute for unification of churches. Among the pioneers of inter-religious dialogue were also young theology students in Zagreb, Ljubljana and Belgrade who were communicating in writing and exchanging congratulations on occasion of religious holidays. During the Second Vatican Council in 1963 theology students in Ljubljana visited their peers in Belgrade, while a delegation of Zagreb theologians paid a visit to Belgrade the following year. The same year Belgrade-seated theologians visited them in Zagreb (Kolarić, 1991:177).

In January 1966 Archbishop of Split Frane Franić staged the first ecumenical liturgy in the Split Cathedral together with an Eastern Orthodox priest. As of January 1984 “ecumenical prayer processions” had been organized in Zagreb with participation of Catholics, Orthodox, Evangelists and Baptists. The Prayer Movement of Christian Women had been functioning in Vojvodina since 1977 assembling Reformists and Catholics (founders), Greek Catholics, Evangelists and Methodists (Kolarić, 1991:181).

Influential, radical anti-ecumenical theologians within the Serbian Orthodox Church were undermining inter-religious cooperation. One of most influential among them was former professor of the Faculty of Theology Justin Popović who lived in isolation in the Monastery of Celije in the vicinity of Valjevo. His epistle published in Paris in 1971 and his study of ecumenism published in Greece in 1974 resounded on all sides. He condemned both groups of the ecumenical movement: the so-called “Geneva ecumenism” and “Roman ecumenism;” he argued that ecumenism was possible only if all Christians would accept the Eastern Orthodox teachings and in no other way. Another influential anti-ecumenical theologian of the Serbian Orthodox Church was Nikolaj Velimirović. They both made a point of criticizing humanism, European civilization, the spirit of materialism, etc.

Justin Popović’s student and one of leading SPC theologians Atanasije Jevtić is also among strong opponents of inter-religious cooperation. In 1975, as a professor at the Faculty of Theology in Belgrade, he stood against an ecumenical conference and ecumenical prayers. Apart from a few exceptions, SPC theologians shared his view though it had never been an official stance of the SPC (Radić, 2007:291).

At a meeting between Archbishop of Zagreb Cardinal Franjo Šeper and Patriarch German in Sremski Karlovci in late June 1968, the Cardinal suggested establishment of a mixed committee of the Orthodox and Catholics tasked with solving the problems of mixed marriages. In September 1985 Patriarch German accepted this initiative but the first meeting of the committee scheduled in 1986 never took place as in the meantime a delegation of SPC temporarily left the Fourth Meeting of the Commission for Dialogue between Orthodox and Catholic Churches in Bari (Italy) held in May-June 1986 in protest against alleged proselytism by the Catholic Church and Vatican’s alleged recognition of the Macedonian Orthodox Church (Kolarić, 1991:182).

Inter-faculty symposiums assembling representatives of the Catholic Theological Faculty in Zagreb, the Faculty of Theology in Ljubljana and the Orthodox Theological Faculty in Belgrade had been organized since 1974. The Ninth Ecumenical Symposium in the autumn of 1990 was held without theologians from Zagreb Kolarić 1991:183). The same year the SPC refused to participate in the “ecumenical prayer procession in Zagreb.”

The polemic with the Glas Koncila (Voice of Council) Atanasije Jevtić started in autumn 1988 had flared up in the meantime. And it was in 1990 that the magazine started running fiery articles about the number of victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp, the massacre of the Serbs in Livno, etc.

A press release by the conference of Serbian Orthodox bishops and clergy on the territory of the Republic of Croatia held in September 1990 quotes that the Serbian Orthodox Church in Croatia works under “most aggravated, almost invasive circumstances” and blames for it Croatia’s state authorities. It also accuses the Glas Koncila and the Catholic Church of their open support to the Croatian Democratic Community /HDZ/, and protests against ill-treatment of Serbian Orthodox people in Croatia.

According to some sources, in late May 1989 Cardinal Kuharić initiated a dialogue between the two churches; the SPC Synod responded affirmatively in late June, but no further reaction by the Catholic Church ensued (Radić, 2002:319).

The SPC mostly criticized the Catholic Church for the support its press, the Radio Vatican and some Catholic representatives were giving to Albanians’ demand for autonomy of Kosovo, Vatican’s support to the Macedonian Orthodox Church, a campaign for beatification of Alojzije Stepinac, including the polemic about the number of Ustashi’s victims in the Jasenovac concentration camp, and the Serbs’ suffering in NDH. The question of the Pope’s possible visit to Yugoslavia was also opened in the early 1980s.

Dignitaries of the two churches have met more than once during the wars on the territory of socialist Yugoslavia, and issued joint appeals for peace. Patriarch Pavle and Cardinal Kuharić met in 1992 in Sremski Karlovci and a year later in Slavonski Brod. In late September 1992 the Conference of European Churches and the Council of European Bishopric Conference arranged a meeting between Patriarch Pavle and Cardinal Kuharić in Chateau Bossey near Geneva; the meeting called for immediate end of conflicts. Reis-ul-ulema Jakub Selimoski could not attend the meeting being a hostage to the siege of Sarajevo. In late November of the same year he, Patriarch Pavle and the then Archbishop of Sarajevo Vinko Puljić met in Zurich and issued a joint appeal (Knežević et al., 2014:9).

A RETROSPECTIVE: THE ROLE OF SPC IN PROTECTING
SERBIAN NATIONAL INTERESTS IN YUGOSLAVIA

Throughout its history the SPC has been closely connected with the state, financially dependent on it and poorly resistant to its pressure. Two centuries of Serbia’s modern history were marked by authoritarianism, which actually remained as the Kingdom of SCS/Yugoslavia’s official policy for all religious communities, including the Serbian Orthodox Church. The period 1937-41 is the only interval in the SPC-state history when the church was allowed to stand against the state or act as its counterpart (Marković, 2005:168). The conflict over a concordat revealed the SPC’s influence was strong enough to make it possible for it to confront the state when it took that its vital interests were jeopardized, and that influence was testified by the part it played in the putsch of March 27, 1941.

Because of the role it has traditionally played in defining national identity of the Serbian people, and its involvement in the administration, which it had always been in symbiosis with (Vukomanović, 2001:103), the Serbian Orthodox Church was not building its political identity independently and separately from the identities of state and nation. Once the Kingdom of SCS/Yugoslavia was established, the Serbian Orthodox Church, “engulfed in its glorious tradition and devotion to the state to the creation of which it has contributed so much, could not understand that the new state was no longer Serbia and that its own, nation-building role could was no longer what it used to be” (Slijepčević, 2002a:6). Since 1918 there have been “two different state-building principles” in Yugoslavia: one by which it was seen as an extended Kingdom of Serbia and the other taking Yugoslavia as a community of South Slav peoples. Considering itself a religious and national guarding of the Serbian people, the SPC advocated the first principle (Radić, 1995:324; 2002:337). Having identified itself fully with Serbia as a state and the Serbs as a nation, the SPC stood for a national rather than just a religious institution; to it, Yugoslavia meant loss of statehood and national identity of the Serbian people. Identification of nation with religion – or ethnicity with creed – rests on the belief is deep-rooted in national being and that nation could not survive without its church. This symbiosis between “ecclesistical and political nationalism” ensures a transcendental value and significant to the nation itself (Vukomanović, 2001:101).

In the aftermath of the WWII – disorganized and dwindled by the war, materially destroyed, left without international backing and mortgaged by Serbian hegemonism – the Serbian Orthodox Church found itself for the first time in a totally secular system which had no ear for its historical merits and national significance; on the contrary, it stigmatized these characteristics as socially unwelcome. In the second half of the 20th century the Serbian Orthodox Church was boiled down to its basic function – true, a reduced one – and its functioning was placed under control (Perović, 2004:124).

Atheization was launched shortly after the end of the WWII and had a significant role in legitimizing the new socialist order; it was meant to de-politicize and de-nationalize traditional ethnic and religious conflicts characteristic of the Kingdom of SCS/Yugoslavia. At the beginning the effects of atheization were barely radical considering traditional churches’ deep roots in national beings of South Slav peoples and conventional religiousness of the masses. It was only in the mid-1950s that these effects became visible. In saying this one should not ignore major structural changes taking place in the society at the same time: modernization of a traditional society, systemic and massive industrialization, urbanization and deagrarianization.

The effects of atheization and secularization were the biggest in traditionally predominant Eastern Orthodox regions; in other words, it turned out that Eastern Orthodoxy was least resistant to the state’s interventionism. According to Dragoljub Đorđević, three factors that have vitally influenced “the general ambiance” of secularization of Eastern Orthodox religiousness were main reasons why people “distanced themselves from the church:” the hardships of the WWII; the Bolshevik regime that has not applied the same yardstick to all religions and religious communities so that they rated differently in the distribution of the state’s grace; and weaknesses within the Church itself as an institution (Đorđević and Đurović, 1994:221). To this ambience the authors add another two specific factors stimulating secularization of the Serbs: ideologization of social relations; and, atheist education and raising children (Blagojević, 2005:177).

This paper has already stated the Serbian Orthodox Church’s “martyrdom” during the WWII. However, the argument about some religions having been privileged in comparison with the Orthodox at the time of socialist Yugoslavia – in other words that on the territories of Slovenian and Croatian Catholicism political, systematic stigmatization of believers had not been as manifest as in the case of the Orthodox – necessitates specific historical research to be taken as quite sustainable (Blagojević, 2005:177). Given that before and after Yugoslav integrations the Serbian Orthodox Church had been and was the biggest religious community with the stronger national trait, the biggest flock, the strongest territorial jurisdiction and traditionally connected with the Serbian statehood, no wonder that it was the one the state had to hold the tightest rein on; and the pressure on it was probably bigger than on other confessions, proportionally with its social power. Ever since the Corfu Conference and the principle of religious equality it adopted, the thesis about discrimination of the SPC has been promoted. “In the document whereby foundations of a new Yugoslav state were established and at the initiative by Nikola Pašić, Eastern Orthodoxy and so the Serbian church too was sacrificed in the name of the principle of religious equality. Three religions, regardless of how much each had done for the safeguard of national identity and state-building were placed in the same basket” (Perić, 1999:192).

The above-mentioned argument, most important for interpretation of the reasons behind obvious desecularization of traditionally Orthodox territories can be further clarified by internal weaknesses of Orthodoxy Ernst Benz wrote about. Namely, Benz quotes four weaknesses, i.e. threats to the structure of an Orthodox church: the state’s supremacy over it vs. the idealistic Orthodox dogma about “harmony” or “symphony” between the two; predominance of national-church consciousness or conflation compared with Ecumenism; liturgical isolationism, i.e. predominance of liturgical-sacramental ceremonies over preaching; and, transcendentalism, i.e. transcendent values surpassing worldly ones that are therefore neglected (Benz, 1991:63-65). To this Milan Vukomanović adds another three reasons that may explain why secularization was so successful on territories of Orthodoxy: perseverance of Serbian pagan heritage; interwoven religious and national factors; and, conservativism of the Serbian Orthodox Church, i.e. the church that has no ear for modernization processes and would not adjust itself to the post-industrial civilization (Vukomanović, 2001:103).

On Catholic confessional territories in mid-1970s and almost a decade later on Orthodox ones the trend towards ending atheization and first signs of de-atheization can be discerned. Growing political and socioeconomic crisis in the 1980s and worsening material situation of younger generations provided a welcome background to the said tendency. According to Dragomir Pantić, deeper and deeper social crisis that specifically affected younger generations, mostly unemployed and desperate about the future resulted in renewed religiousness among the youth in the second half of the 1980s.

However, territorial and national homogenization of the youth in which church-religious complex emerged as actor of compensation and national safeguard is also a major factor to be taken into consideration. Ethno-religious legitimization of newly emerged states on the territory of Yugoslavia influenced the most mass resumption of tradition, religion, national identity, national heroes and state-building ideas (Blagojević, 2005:180).

There is a larger, supra-national context to the growth in religiousness and especially people’s growing identification with religion that should also not to be neglected: general political and cultural pluralization of societies during and after collapse of socialism at global and, notably, at European level; general tendency towards desecularization throughout Eastern Europe; collapse of generally accepted values; relatively growing differentiation of spiritual offers at religious market; different spiritual needs of many people; the need for God in the search for happiness, hope and consolation, etc.

In the early 1980s, at the time the question of Kosovo was raised, a group of younger theologians of the Serbian Orthodox Church stepped on the scene calling for a more active church instead of a lethargic one. Since 1981 the clergy and theologians have more and more frequently and with growing intensity criticized top dignitaries for being insufficiently energetic in their attitude towards the authorities. They were issuing appeals, signing petitions to and calling dignitaries to have the church abandon its isolationism and become actively present in the society. Playing on Kosovo as an unsettled problem in Serbia and Yugoslavia, the Serbian Orthodox Church offered itself as a stronghold of traditional national security and center of national life as it had been for centuries and as the only institution that “has never in history let down the Serbs.” Some bishops were using Kosovo – and the church’s justified concern for sacral facilities there, the Serbs’ moving out of it and decreasing number of believers – as a key argument for the church’s return to the public scene. Stands about “tragic position of the Serbian people in Yugoslavia” were more and more frequently given voice to.

National continuity, cult of national and religious heroes and, generally, national history, national letter and traditional customs and values are nourished under the auspices of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Deepening of the general crisis and disintegration of the system turned Orthodoxy growingly important to cultural and national identity of the Serbian people, their homogenization and identification vs. other national and religious groups; all this created the atmosphere in which citizens were turning to the church and religion to express some of their latent dissatisfaction, thus strengthening political significance of the former. The church so became a refuge to a part of political and cultural opposition, and invested legitimacy in a part of nationally oriented intelligentsia.

The Serbian Orthodox Church has been claiming that it had always been the only one standing for the Serbian people and had never abandoned them; and as such it was above the state and a supreme moral arbiter whose intentions and stands were not to be questioned (Radić, 2002:338). The church and Serbian Orthodoxy in their Slavophiliac version of European organic-organicist thought, undisputed unity and St. Sava teaching present themselves as the basic source of a nation and a privileged guardian of national tradition, culture, historical experience, language, etc. (Radić, 2007:293).

On the eve of Yugoslav wars, especially in the period 1989-91, the Serbian Orthodox Church played an important role in mobilizing the public opinion for Serbian national interests promoted by the political leadership with Slobodan Milošević at its head. The church’s political comeback went hand in hand with the rise of nationalistic elites as testified by “Serbian Draft Church-National Program” the Voice of Church publicized in 1989. Two years later this church mouthpiece wrote not that there could be “no strong state without a strong church” which preconditioned the existence of the nation itself. “While renewing our spiritual foundations we should start from the fact that Orthodoxy had given birth to Serbhood, which could not be kept alive without it. The Serbs who are no longer Orthodox believers are no longer Serbs at all.”

Importance of religious traditions for the safeguard of ethnic and cultural identity led to emergence of religion as a political fact. Transformation (the so-called transition) of the Yugoslav society that, among other things, implied liberalization of relations between post-communist countries and religious communities in the period of powerful rise of nationalism opened once again the door to the use of religion for political purpose. Renewed religiousness was in the function of legitimizing, homogenizing and mobilizing nations and states. New political elites that were using religion for their own legitimization and as a tool for mobilizing wide strata of society were constituted on the one hand, while on the other religious communities recognized the comeback of nationalism as an opportunity for the comeback of their own after five decades of living at the margins of secularized, atheist society. Nationalistic programs brought religious and ruling political structures closer together. Atanasije Jevtić’s presence at the mass rally in Belgrade testified that the church and political elites think as one; what tied them together became even stronger when the church said amen to the nationalistic program embodied in the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU).

Monopolization of victims, mythologization and glorification of national history, and sacralization of politics and history predominated the wording of the church-political national program. Organization of or participation in all sorts of memorial services for unearthing of bones of the Serbs killed in the WWII, processions carrying bodily remnants of Prince Lazar through several eparchies, transport of Nikolaj Velimirović’s bodily remnants from America to Serbia, etc., were meant to evoke ancient fears and myths in the service of mobilization and homogenization of Serbian ethnos on the territory of Yugoslavia. Sources for understanding Serbian modern nationalism were in the writings of Nikolaj Velimirović whom the SPC clergy most frequently quotes in their addresses. Extracts from his best known works “Nationalism of St. Sava” and “Messages to Serbian people through a dungeon hole” became the ABC’s of Serbian nationalism and phyletism, and the church outdid itself to make his bodily remnants in 1991 returned “at long last” from America.

Though the 1991-95 Yugoslav war was not religious par excellence since religious have not nominally brought about conflicts, the role and responsibility of religious communities in the armed disintegration of the federal state is still under reconsideration. The SPC dignitaries has insisted on monopolizing the role of a victim and the argument that for the second time in its history the Serbian people experienced genocide, as well as on a defensive warfare and just war. They have argued that the one and only, and final solution to the national question was pan-Serbian unification, i.e. the safeguard of the SPC’s consolidated spiritual jurisdiction.

During the war the SPC frequently oscillated between declarative ecumenical, anti-war stances and actual support for ethno-nationalistic political forces, especially in Republika Srpska. It strongly condemned crimes but interpreted those committed by the Serbian side as excesses. Appeals for peace, negotiations and a search for just solutions marked as a rule the discourse of church representatives but their notion of “a just war” usually implied only what was in the interest of the Serbian nation. The Archbishopric did not exactly spoke as one about many issues, but the absence of its clearly defined stand about ongoing, chaotic developments caused many individual and collective pro-war actions not/done in “the name of faith.” The clergy blessing para-military troops in battlefields, the pictures they took with arms in their hand and, more often, with “Serbian heroes” went hand in hand with the theory of “defensive warfare” or “just” war.

In his address to Lord Carrington and governmental officials in 1991 the Patriarch himself said that Serbs would “fight with arms to remain in the same state with the core of the Serbian people” and that the state had to “protect Serbian brothers in Croatia by all legitimate means, including armed self-defense in all Serbian regions.” The Appeal to Serbian People and the Public Worldwide the SPC Bishopric Conference issue in 1995 quoted, “Today, as people and the Church, deep-rooted in the tormented land of Bosnia-Herzegovina we cannot accept the decisions on percentages and maps imposed on us in Geneva that would deprive us of our Žitomislići at the Neretva River, the Unity Church in Mostar, the Sopotnica Church at the Drina River, the Krka Monastery or the monasteries of Krupa in Dalmatia, Ozren and Vozuće in Bosnia, Prebilovica in Herzegovina, and Jasenovac in Slavonia.”

Relations between the two biggest religious organizations in Yugoslavia – the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church – were of major importance to the multiethnic and multireligious country traditionally marked by ethno-confessional identification wherein those relations crucially influenced those between the two biggest nations. Neither of the two churches is directly responsible for starting the wars and the way they were wagged, but their inability to engage in a dialogue influenced the general atmosphere in the country and opened the question of their moral responsibility and the misbalance between their roles as Christian and national institutions.

* * *

Although communism is mostly blamed – especially by circles within the church – as the main cause and pillar of secularization, the fact remains that the idea of secularism has practically overwhelmed the Serbian society throughout the 20th century. Serbian intelligentsia, educated in the West, accepted secular principles spreading over the society, which the church and clergy were not capable of confronting this intelligentsia. Secular principles became more visible with the establishment of the first Yugoslav state only to be given, after the WWII, a clear-cut and rigid institutional form. Even since unification against the new sociopolitical background the Serbian Orthodox Church has done all in its power to position itself vis-à-vis growing secularism; while neglecting its primary function as time went by it was trying to restore its influence and privileges by non-religious means.

Like Peter Berger or, more precisely, Vyacheslav Karpov, the process of desecularization the initial shapes of which were recognizable in Yugoslavia in the early 1980s – while its scope and effects are visible to this very day in all post-Yugoslav societies, could be characterized as counter-secularization, i.e. a desecularizing process that implies the effects of secularization and emerges as a reaction to the past or ongoing secularization or atheization, the process directly connected with specific secular tendencies.

All components (tendencies) of counter-secularization have been growingly evident ever since the beginning of the process of desecularization: 1) institutions secularized in the past are closer and closer to religious norm, both formally and informally; 2) religious beliefs and practices are revived; 3) religion is back in the public sphere (deprivatization); 4) religious contents in a variety of cultural sub-systems (arts, philosophy, literature, etc.) are revived; and, 5) changes in “social substrate” are connected with religion (e.g., demographic changes that have to do with religion, redefinition of territories and population by religious criteria, etc.) (Karpov, 2010:250). In his analysis of religious changes in post-communism Milan Vukomanović also pointed out this “reactionary” character of desecularization; during revitalization of religion in Yugoslavia negative politicization of religion shifted towards affirmative politicization. After half a century long process “turning politics into religion,” i.e. forced “hyper-politicization” of almost all aspects of social life, including negatively ideologized religion, the course of the same process changed. The “return” to traditional religion, even to conservative religiousness, emerged as a major factor of the safeguard of national identity, while high value attached to tradition – worship of national and religious past – led to political misuse of the tie between religion and nation (Vukomanović, 2001:99). Analyzing “desecularized regimes” Karpov pointed to the same potential function of the process of desecularization; he specifically put his finger on the case of regimes that support counter-secular tendencies for nonreligious reasons: religion as a resource of strength or defense of threatened culture was used in the conflict stricken territory of the former socialist Yugoslavia for the purpose of homogenization of national-religious groups.

The Serbian Orthodox Church stepped on the scene as a staunch “activist of desecularization;” “actors of desecularization” responded to the establishment of a “desecularized regime” mostly in two ways: by converting to “legitimate” religion and by ritual “belonging without religion.” Srđan Vrcan (Vrcan, 1986) and Dragoljub Đorđević had also indicated this traditional and conventional tie with religion and the church, as well as the fact that religious belonging was not the same as religiousness; the latter specified three almost identical forms of confessional identification: 1) traditional connection to a particular religion that is nonreligious because of religion’s identification with ethnos but with clear consciousness about confessional background, and 2) recognition of one’s confessional origin, “religion by birth,” despite the lack in rational consciousness about it and nonreligiousness (Đorđević, 2000: 164).

It would be hard to deny that the Serbian Orthodox Church – especially in the last two decades of the 20th century – was more a national-political than a religious institution; having neglected it primary duties it prioritized the struggle for national interests over religious and universalistic values. The Serbian Orthodox Church accomplished full desecularization in Serbia after the period of blocked transformation when it formally and finally managed to realize numbers of preconditions defined in the 1989 “Serbian Draft Church-National Program.”

Literature

Benc, Ernst (1991) „Veličina i slabost pravoslavlja”, in: Đorđević, Dragoljub B. (ed.) Pravoslavlje između neba i zemlje, Niš: Gradina.

Berger, Peter (1999) „The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview“, in: Berger, Peter (ed.) The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, Grand Rapids: William B. Eardmans Publishing Company.

Blagojević, Mirko (2005) Religija i crkva u transformacijama društva, Belgrade: IFDT, Filip Višnjić.

Blagojević, Mirko (2015) Vitalnost religije u (de)sekularizovanom društvu, Belgrade: Institut društvenih nauka.

Cvitković, Ivan (2001) „Religije, religijske zajednice i politika(e) na Balkanu”, u: Vukomanović, Milan i Vučinić, Marinko (ed.), Religije Balkana: susreti i prožimanja, Belgrade: BOŠ.

Cvitković, Ivan (2001a) „Nacija, nacionalizam i religije Balkana”, in: Vukomanović, Milan i Vučinić, Marinko (prir.), Religije Balkana: susreti i prožimanja, Belgrade: BOŠ.

Cvitković, Ivan (2003) „Religije i (ne)nasilje”, u: Vukomanović, Milan i Vučinić, Marinko (ed.), Religijski dijalog: drama razumevanja, Belgrade: BOŠ.

Đorđević, Dragoljub B. (ed.) (1991) Pravoslavlje između neba i zemlje, Niš: Gradina.

Đorđević, Dragoljub B. i Đurović, Bogdan (1994) „Sekularizacija i pravoslavlje: slučaj Srba”, in: Đorđević, Dragoljub B. (ur.) Povratak svetog?, Niš: Gradina.

Đorđević, Dragoljub b. (2000) „Sociološki uvid u kulturu pravoslavlja (Srpsko pravoslavlje i SPC)“, Teme, Vol. XXIV, No. 1-2:161-175.

Đorđević, D. B., Stajić, P., Todorović, D. (2014) Hrišćanstvo u 21. veku, Novi Sad, Leskovac, Niš: Prometej, Leskovački kulturni centar, JUNIR.

Gredelj, Stjepan (1999) „Klerikalizam, etnofiletizam, antiekumenizam i (ne)tolerancija”, Sociologija, Vol. LXI, 2:143-164.

Halpern, Džoel M. i Kajdikel, Dejvid A. (2002) Susedi u ratu (Jugoslovenski etnicitet, kultura i istorija iz ugla antropologa), Beograd: Samizdat B92.

Janković, Dragomir (2014) „Dvadeset i prvi vijek: mejnstrim i pseudopravoslavlje”, in: Đorđević, D. B., Stajić, P., Todorović, D. Hrišćanstvo u 21. veku, Novi Sad, Leskovac, Niš: Prometej, Leskovački kulturni centar, JUNIR.

Karpov, Vyacheslav (2010) “Desecularization: A Conceptual Framework”, Journal of Church and State, Vol. 52, No. 2:232-270.

Knežević, N., Pantelić, B. i Sremac, S. (prir.) (2014) Religija, odgovornost i tranziciona Pravda, Novi Sad, Beograd: Centar za istraživanje religije, politike i društva, Hrišćanski kulturni centar dr Radovan Bigović.

Kolarić, Juraj (1991) „Katoličko-pravoslavni odnosi (1965-1990)”, in: Đorđević, Dragoljub B. (ed.) Pravoslavlje između neba i zemlje, Niš: Gradina.

Marković, Slobodan G. (2005) „Srpska pravoslavna crkva u Srbiji i država: klerikalizacija ili cezaropapizam”, in: Sitarski, Milan i Vučinić, Marinko, Vera, znanje, mir, Belgrade: BOŠ.

Mladenović, Radoš i Ćulibrk, Jovan (prir.) (1996) Jagnje Božije i zvijer iz bezdana, Cetinje: Svetigora.

Novaković, Dragan (2003) Verske zajednice na razmeđu vekova, Belgrade: Institut za političke studije.

Perica, Vjekoslav (2002) Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States, Oxford U.P.

Perić, Dimšo (1999) Crkveno pravo, Beograd: Pravni fakultet Univerziteta u Beogradu, Centar za publikacije Dosije.

Perović, Latinka (2004) „Sociopolitička i etničko-religijska dimenzija ratova u Jugoslaviji“, in: Hadžić, Miroslav (ed.), Nasilno rasturanje Jugoslavije: uzroci, dinamika, posledice, Belgrade: Centar za civilno-vojne odnose.

Petrović, Vladimir (2005) „Hantingtonova pastorčad: Religija među uzrocima ratova za jugoslovensko nasleđe”, in: Sitarski, Milan i Vučinić, Marinko, Vera, znanje, mir, Belgrade: BOŠ.

Popov, Nebojša (ed.) (2002) Srpska strana rata: trauma i katarza u istorijskom pamćenju. Deo I, Belgrade: Samizdat B92.

Popović-Obradović, Olga (2004): „Crkva, nacija, država – Srpska pravoslavna crkva i tranzicija u Srbiji”, in: Vujadinović, D., Veljak, L., Goati, V., Pavićević, V. (ed.), Između autoritarizma i demokratije: Srbija, Crna Gora, Hrvatska – Civilno društvo i politička kultura, Vol.II, Belgrade: CEDET.

Radić, Radmila (1995) Verom protiv vere (država i verske zajednice u Srbiji 1945-1953), Belgrade: INIS.

Radić, Radmila (1996) „Crkva i „srpsko pitanje””, in: Popov, Nebojša (prir.) (2002) Srpska strana rata: trauma i katarza u istorijskom pamćenju, Vol. I, Belgrade: Samizdat B92.

Radić, Radmila (2002) Država i verske zajednice 1945-1970, I-II, Belgrade: INIS.

Radić, Radmila (2007) „Odnosi između Srpske pravoslavne crkve i Katoličke crkve u poslednjim decenijama pred raspad jugoslovenske države“, in: Bjelajac, Mile (ed.) Pisati istoriju Jugoslavije: Viđenje srpskog faktora, Belgrade: Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije.

Radulović, Marijana, „Studija slučaja: religijska (ne)tolerancija u Glasu koncila i Pravoslavlju (1989-1991)“, Nova srpska politička misao, Belgrade, 1-4/2001.

Slijepčević, Đoko (2002) Istorija Srpske pravoslavne crkve II: Od početka XIX veka do kraja Drugog svetskog rata, Belgrade: JRJ.

Slijepčević, Đoko (2002a) Istorija Srpske pravoslavne crkve III: Za vreme Drugog svetskog rata i posle njega, Belgrade: JRJ

Todorović, Dragan (2014) „Srpska pravoslavna crkva na početku trećeg milenijuma”, u: Đorđević, D. B., Stajić, P., Todorović, D. Hrišćanstvo u 21. veku, Novi Sad, Leskovac, Niš: Prometej, Leskovački kulturni centar, JUNIR.

Tomanić, Milorad (2001) Srpska crkva u ratu i ratovi u njoj, Belgrade: Medijska knjižara Krug

Štobe, Hajnc-Ginter (1999) „Religijske implikacije sukoba u Centralnoj i Istočnoj Evropi”, in: Kuburić, Zorica i Vukomanović, Milan (ur.), Hrišćanstvo, društvo, politika, JUNIR godišnjak VI, Niš: JUNIR.

Ver, Timoti (1991) „Pravoslavna crkva i ponovno ujedinjenje svih hrišćana”, in: Đorđević, Dragoljub B. (ed.) Pravoslavlje između neba i zemlje, Niš: Gradina.

Vratuša-Žunjić, Vera (1995) Razvoj, religija, rat, Belgrade: Institut za sociološka istraživanja.

Vratuša-Žunjić, Vera (1996) „Stanje religioznosti u bivšoj Jugoslaviji neposredno pred rat 1991“, Sociološki pregled, br. 4.

Vrcan, Srđan (1986) Od krize religije k religiji krize, Zagreb: Školska knjiga.

Vukomanović, Milan (1998) “Religion between Nationalism and Patriotism: The case of the Serbian Orthodox Church“, Regional Contact, XII, No. 13, Institute for Ethnic and Regional Studies, Maribor.

Vukomanović, Milan (2000) „Religija, konflikt, identitet”, Filozofija i društvo, No. XVI.

Vukomanović, Milan (2001) Sveto i mnoštvo, Beograd: Čigoja.

Vukomanović, Milan (2004) „Uloga religije u jugoslovenskim sukobima”, in: Hadžić, Miroslav (ed.), Nasilno rasturanje Jugoslavije: uzroci, dinamika, posledice, Belgrade: Centar za civilno-vojne odnose.

Vukomanović, Milan (2005) „Religijska dimenzija jugoslovenskih sukoba”, in: Sitarski, Milan i Vučinić, Marinko, Vera, znanje, mir, Beograd: BOŠ.