RELIGION-SERBIA: Nationalism Gathers Around Church

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Feb 6 2003 (IPS) - The Serbian Orthodox Church finds itself at the heart of a new nationalism.

Nationalist politicians are rallying Serbs on religious grounds. Their moves come as the Church looks for a place in modern Serbian society after decades of communist rule that ended with the fall of Slobodan Milosevic two years ago.

The Church had tacitly approved the politics of Milosevic. It did not condemn the war crimes by Serbs against Catholic Croats or Muslim Bosniaks and Albanians. It took much the same stand as Milosevic’s regime, that Serbs were only defending themselves. Those wars left more than 200,000 people dead.

The regime that took over from Milosevic also wants the support of the Church. "They (the new administration) were afraid that a lot of people might not like their secular views or might compare them to the communists," says analyst Jelena Tasic.

Church services are now aired on television on important occasions. Religion has been introduced in the school curriculum.

"Serbs are very religious people, proud of their Orthodox religion that kept them alive for centuries," says Vuk Draskovic, leader of the nationalist Serbian Renewal Party. "It kept alive their spiritual lives, roots, tradition."

On the other hand, a group of Serb intellectuals has launched a public campaign against what they call the efforts of the Church to influence all areas of life.

"The church is trying to fill the void in a society where values have been turned upside down," the Belgrade Circle of Independent Intellectuals says in a statement. "However, the church is not keeping any distance with shameful nationalism and war crimes committed by Serbs in the past decade."

A survey by the polling agency Faktor Plus indicates that most Serbs do not care about religion. About 70 per cent of those polled said they celebrate Christmas, but 45 per cent said this was because of tradition, and only 25 per cent because they consider themselves believers.

Another survey indicated that only six per cent of Serbs go to church regularly, and only 20 per cent believe in God. Only three per cent of those polled could remember the ten commandments.

"Serbs view Orthodoxy mostly as a ritual and not as a religion," Gordana Zivkovic from the Institute for European Studies told IPS. "The Church did suffer under communism since 1945, but it has not found a way to approach people in the spirit of modern times. It has remained dark, always the same, as in the past centuries."

Milan Vukomanovic, professor of sociology at Belgrade University says the Church will have to find a new role because it cannot win people over automatically. "The Church has dealt with monarchy before World War II, it then experienced suppression under the communist regime and survived," Vukomanovic told IPS. "But it has no experience with democratic regimes."

While it looks for a new role, Vukomanovic says "mixed feelings about the church will remain, and politicians will use it in whatever way they need."

Differences have arisen within the Church. A group calling itself the "keepers of Orthodox religion" held fierce protests before the seat of the Patriarch last week against a visit to the Vatican by a church delegation. The Patriarch was shouted away when he tried to intervene.

Christianity split into Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism in the 12th century, and many Orthodox churches consider ecumenism, or bridging the gap between the two, as blasphemy. The visit to the Vatican, however, began as scheduled Monday this week.