The Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) experienced major status changes after the creation of the second Yugoslavia in 1945. In the new communist state, along with the Catholic Church and other religious communities, it was pushed to the fringes of society. In the 1980s, the position of the SPC began to change due to political shifts and a different attitude of religion to the public sphere. The dissertation places the SPC in the post-war political situation characterized by the development from the suppression of religion through dialogue to a tolerant coexistence and cooperation. It focuses on the period from the death of President Josip Broz Tito (1980) to the death of Serbian Patriarch German (1991), or to the independence of Slovenia and Croatia (1991). In this crisis decade of the gradual disintegration of Yugoslavia, the SPC becomes distinctly nationally and politically engaged. The process of desecularization began in the Serbian society. The political and economic crisis provokes inter-ethnic tensions and nationalistic tendencies, further exacerbated by the issue of the Serbian minority in Kosovo. The year 1982 marks the official return of the SPC to the public sphere and its Appeal for the Protection of the Serbian Population and its Holy Sites in Kosovo and Metohija, signed by twenty-one monks and nuns, as well as by the most prominent Serbian theologians from clerical and monastic ranks. The Appeal was addressed to the highest state and church authorities of Yugoslavia and Serbia. Its purpose was to ensure the necessary protection of the spiritual and biological existence of the Serbian population in Kosovo and Metohija. With this, the fate of Kosovo as the »cradle of the Serbian nation" and »holy land" came to the forefront of the interest of theologians, politicians and the general public. The »Kosovo myth« and the »Kosovo covenant« have also been revived, on which rests the idea of the Serbs as a »heavenly« and »chosen nation«, inspired predominantly by the figure of Saint Sava, the founder of the SPC. A specific Serbian »Evangelical« or »Saintsavian nationalism« and traditionalism arose out of this idea, one clearly anti-Western, anti-Catholic and anti-ecumenical. It was conceptually founded by Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović and his disciple, the monk Justin Popović. Both had a decisive influence on their spiritual disciples, theologian-monks in the last decades of the century, who continued to establish a new national and religious ideology among believers and citizens. The return to tradition, to historical themes, to Saint Sava and to the Battle of Kosovo strengthened the self-confidence of Serbian Orthodoxy in relation to the communist state, thereby forming a new national-spiritual identity. This eventually resulted in the rejection and final abolition of the Union of Associations of Orthodox Priests in SFRY (1990) by the leadership of the SPC; according to the judgment of the bishops, priests submitted themselves too much to state politics. The dissertation engages with the creation of a new political-ideological form of the SPC in relation to society and politics, one that required intensive interventions in political events (the direction advocated by the younger theologian-monks), unlike the politically restrained Patriarch German. In the 1980s, the SPC assumed a crucial role in political developments, making Serbian Orthodoxy into a form of religious-political ideology the most believers and citizens identified with. It was a two-way process: religion transformed into ideology, and ideology into religion. The fate of Kosovo and Metohija became a major media topic throughout Yugoslavia, one that the SPC, as well as the politicians and the intellectual elite were engaged with. Demands for an even stronger political engagement of the SPC came from the circles of the intelligentsia. The public appearances and statements of the SPC representatives were joined by the members of the Association of Writers of Serbia, followed also by members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. These developments were covered by the official magazine of SPC Pravoslavlje, the concept of which was fundamentally altered in accordance with politics of the church in the 1980s.
The dissertation will also present the history of relations between the SPC and the Catholic Church: first, the conflict period in the first Yugoslavia, marked by the »concordat crisis«, followed by the period of a careful establishment of ecumenical relations with the Catholic Church within Yugoslavia, as well as internationally. Dialogic and ecumenical openness was particularly distinguished by the long fruitful activity of the Orthodox Patriarch German (1958-1990) and by the ecumenical and pastoral endeavours of the Belgrade Catholic Archbishop Franc Perko (1987-2001).
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