Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

the Serbian Church had 27 bishops, 3,084 priests, monks, and nuns, 4
seminaries, and one theological school. At the same time, the Catholic
Church in Yugoslavia had 36 bishops, 5,500 priests, monks, and nuns, 7
theological schools, and 22 seminaries, let alone the Church abroad, the
Catholic publishing houses, and the Church press that dwarfed the Orthodox
church resources. 57
In 1984, the newspaper of the Alliance of Socialist Youth of Serbia,
Omladinske novine (Youth Paper), revealed the results of its study entitled
“Social Activism of the Young.” According to this project, 77 percent of the
polled in the age group 12 to 18 declared themselves atheists. The percentage
increased to 81 percent in the older age groups (18 to 27). 58 A University
of Zagreb study showed a slight decline of religious affiliation during the
decade 1975–84. 59 According to this research, the relative number of nonreligious
is ordinarily high among Orthodox Serbs, including Serbs living
outside Serbia. Whereas 70 percent of the interviewees of Orthodox background
said that they did not believe in God, only 30 percent of Catholics
and 40 percent of Muslims made such a declaration. 60 The number of selfdeclared
atheists was highest among Yugoslavs by nationality (45 percent),
followed by the Serbs (42 percent), while only 12 percent of the interviewees
of Croatian background said they were nonreligious. Another survey, entitled
“Status, Consciousness, and Behavior of the Young Generation in SFR
Yugoslavia” polled a sample of 6,500 respondents and revealed an overall
decline of religiosity during the period between 1953 and 1985–86. Thus,
among the Orthodox the decrease was 35.5 percent to 28.9 percent; the
decrease was for the Catholics 25.2 percent to 21.9 percent and for the
Muslims 15.6 percent to 13.4 percent. 61 The sociologist of religion Srdjan
Vrcan noted that church leaders, clergy, and lay movements had become
overall more active and visible in the public sphere, while at the same time
nothing had changed concerning general trends of secularization. 62 In other
words, people did not seek God more or less than before, while ethnic nationalism
was growing and mainstream religious organizations were seeking
to influence sociopolitical changes at the moment when the end of communism
could have been envisioned. The “conversion” of Slobodan Milosˇević
is highly instructive because it exemplifies the character of “religious
revival” in Serbia in the 1980s. Milosˇević remained indifferent toward God
and despised the clergy, but he was moved by the Serb anger over the Albanian
uprising in Kosovo. This emotional charge was enhanced with the
frustration over the status of Serbia in the Yugoslav federation and the appeal
of Serbian tradition, history, and ethnicity.
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