Religion and Democracy in Serbia since 1989: The Case of the Serbian Orthodox Church

Abstract

In late 1980s, after 40 years of social marginalization, the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC), along with other religious communities, returned to the public sphere and political scene in socialist Yugoslavia. In comparison with other Central and Southeast European countries, this return was several years late. The process was very similar but with one major difference: the wars on the territory of the former Yugoslavia that heavily marked the first period of desecularization. Before the political system itself started to collapse, secularization had already declined due to general mistrust in the Yugoslav state, profound political and economic crisis, and internal disturbances among intellectuals who demanded more freedom in all aspects of social life, including a profound reassessment of the past. The social crisis resulted, at least partly, in a latent discontent of the citizens who turned to religion and the Church with strong political dispositions.1 In socialist Yugoslavia, this process was widely accompanied by ethnocentrism and nationalism, the official rehabilitation of which was needed in order to confirm religion in its traditional role of the keeper of national institutions and values.2KeywordsCivil SocietyReligious CommunityReligious OrganizationReligious EducationReligious AffairThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.