“Resurrection” in the Dying Villages: The Case of Serbia

Abstract

In this paper, the author has attempted to present the relationship between the Orthodox Church and rural areas in Serbia, primarily in the 19th/20th century. Rural areas have always posed many issues to the Orthodox Church, playing different roles in the paradigm of the Church mission. Although the Serbian Church accepted the village as an essential defender of Christianity, church leaders did not put enough efforts into educating and Christianizing these areas. Today, with the new currents in Serbian society, these parishes are dying out. In the light of these changes, we propose, at the end of this article, possible missionary guidelines for the Church in rural Serbian society for the 21st century. At the end of the article the author gives a proposal as to what the Church could reasonably hope to achieve in today’s Serbian village in terms of the issues of: hopelessness–post-EU hope, progress of relationships, liturgical life, “theological aristocracy”, human dignity, and villages instead of old people’s homes.