The beast from the abyss

Abstract

The dissolution of Yugoslavia in the nineties brought a series of armed conflicts, civil wars and outright war to the Balkan Peninsula. The Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) was entangled in these conflicts. The SOC’s involvement in these wars has sparked an academic discussion about the role of religion, especially that of the SOC, in these conflicts. This discussion has so far mainly been social scientific in its scope and preoccupied with nationalist movements and political elites, and has therefore not sought to investigate the SOC’s own reflection on the war. Secondly the discussion of the SOC’s role has been on some level detached from the broader discussion of Christianity’s relation to war and violence. This article will provide an in-depth study of a selection of Serbian Orthodox reflections on war and its relationship to Christian, and in particular Eastern Orthodox, tradition, bringing forth ways in which parts of the SOC views war and violence.