THE SERBIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

AIM, Belgrade, 8.1.94

At the latest 1991 census in Serbia, the total of 9,800,000 people were registered, out of which 6,600,000 declared themselves as Serbian Orthodox. According to Slobodan Milossevicc, however (whose father, by the way, was an Orthodox theologist), there is only one Orthodox living in Serbia! Because, the President of the Republic of Serbia wishes a Merry Christmas and Easter only to the Serbian Patriarch. He wished a merry Christmas to the Serbian Orthodox Church for the first time this year (which, as some other Orthodox Churches celebrates the Birth of Christ on January 7, because they apply the ancient, Julian calender which is 13 days "late" in relation to the Gregorian Calendar).

This apparently minor example related to the protocol is just another illustration of the position the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) holds in the socialist system of Serbia. The national church is not capable of solving even the basic issues of its own status (for example, the return of at least a portion of its nationalized and confiscated property), the Theological Faculty has still not been received back into the Belgrade University, which it was expelled from by the communists, under trite pretexts, the initiative about introduction of religion as an optinonal subject into schools is rejected, etc. The SPC is still weak and pushed to the margins of social forces, so that it cannot be considered as any important political factor, if any at all. It is epsecially hard to argue that the SPC had any impact on starting, actual waging and the possible end of the Serbian-Croatian and the Serbian-Moslem war. The fact that the socialist authorities, the mass media, the paramilitary units and others have used certain religious discourse to achieve some of their objectives, and that the Church did not distance itself from such abuses is a completely different issue.

For instance, the 1981 demonstrations and the movement of the Albanians, in general, to make Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia, a republic, the Serbian communists first interpreted as "counter-revolution", "an attack on the brotherhood and unity of Yugoslav nations and national minorities". When the communists began transforming into socialists, and as the dissolution of Yugoslavia which consisted of six republics and two autonomous provinces as parts of Serbia was approaching, the political parlance began shedding its revolutionary terminology and acquired terms such as "Islamic fundamentalism", and "jihad" of the Albanians. "Threat to the Orthodox religion" became one of the slogans of the regime media used in chilling the relations with the Slovenians and the Croats (who are mostly Catholics). The slogan which served as one of the powerful pretexts for waging the war - "the Serbian countries are wherever Serbian churches and graveyards are" - even if it did originate in the SPC, got its final, bloody striking force only after it was formulated in the programmmes of the war-mongering Television and after it was adopted in police provocations.

At the time of the so-called "anti-bureaucratic revolution", or the "awakening of the Serbian people" dissatisfied with its status in the former loose Yugoslav Federation, the Church silently supported this movement, hoping that it was actually "Resurrection of Serbia". In that period - from 1988 until 1990 - hundreds of thousand of Serbs demanded a firm, "efficient" federal state, carrying pictures of Slobodan Milossevicc, who was then just Secretary General of Serbian communists, but also the puctures of Drazza Mihajlovicc, the Chetniks' general, Saint Sava, who established the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1219, but also the picture of Aleksandar Rankovicc, the former second man of the Communist Party and in Tito's regime, whose executor he had been until Tito removed him. At the time, Milossevicc wished to become s second, new Tito, but the Church circles and the greatest portion of the nationalists gathered around the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts kept hoping that he would just carry out his part of the deal in the "awakening of the people", and that they would then take over the lead of Serbia and all the Serbs in the still existing former Yugoslavia. But in the elections towards the end of 1990, the neo-comunist national collectivism won a victory over all the parties opposed to it. The regime of Slobodan Milossevicc and the Socialist Party of Serbia confirmed their victory on two following occasions - in 1992 and 1993 elections. Most of the members of the Church are close to the opposition, especially the Serbian Renewal Movement of Vuk Drasskovicc, but the opposition also offers only national maximalism, with the only difference that in their variety it would be more efficient and "more enlightened".

The SPC, like any other religious community, especially when it has a national sign, must be behind its people, wherever it may be. The SPC - whose major task still remains to evangelize the Serbs (to most of them, their Orthodox religion still means just tradition and customs, and not ecclesiasticism and an effort to live according to Christian principles) - is now in a position, for instance, to have Zzeljko Razznjatovicc Arkan present himself as a struggler for Orthodox religion. He declared that the commander in chief of his Serbian Voluntary Guards is actually - the Serbian Patriarch! Even the most extremist nationalistic members of the opposition speak about the crimes of the "Guards" in Croatia and Bosnia with disgust and contempt. Even the extremist Vojislav Ssesselj speaks about murders and war profiteering of Arkan who was back in the times of Communist Yugoslavia a collaborator of "certain services" and is a figure appearing on warrants for arrest of Interpol. Although, of course, the Patriarch Pavle is not the commander in chief of Arkan's army, Arkan likes having pictures of him taken with Serbian episcopes.

Mirko MLAKAR