Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

national autocephalous church of Montenegro. Montenegro will become a
full-fledged nation not when it is admitted to the United Nations, or when
the great powers say so, but when the Orthodox Church of Montenegro is
granted autocephaly by other Orthodox churches. Ethnoclericalism has also
generated the most autonomous national branches of Roman Catholicism,
such as the Church of Croatia, the Church of Ireland, the Church of Poland,
and so on. Finally, thanks to the vital Balkan ethnoclericalism, Bosnian Islam
resembles more the Balkan churches than mainstream Islam in the Arab
world. While only some Bosnian Muslim clergy find Islamic fundamentalism
and Arab revolutionary Islam attractive, all of the Bosnian ulema would be
happiest in a Muslim republic under a Muslim government and with an
independent national religious organization staffed by native clergy all of
whom are ethnic Bosniaks or Muslims from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Ethnoclericalism dominates Balkan faiths and determines church-state
relations. In the case of Serbia, for example, the Serbian Orthodox Church
has made clear what kind of government it will sincerely legitimize: a government
composed of ethnic Serbs practicing the faith and securing for the
national church the status of a state religion while developing an educational
curriculum aimed at fostering national ideology, patriotic historiography,
and ethnic customs. In Croatia, the Catholic hierarchy wants to “appoint”
governments and dismiss them if the bishops dislike them. In
Macedonia, the church demands a status in accordance with its function as
the creator of the nation and the factor that makes its existence possible.
Ethnoclericalist religious institutions are both antiliberal in general and
antisecular in particular, that is, they are opponents of the principle of separation
between church and state. It was noted earlier that members of the
government are expected to be practicing believers and government policies
are expected to uphold one specific church and faith rather than “religious
culture” or faith in general. The concept of religious liberty and equality of all
faiths in the country is alien and “unnational.” The clerical profession is not
open for all. All clergy, as well as the chief saints and cults, must belong to the
ethnic group under consideration. For example, Serb national saints carry
more weight than other Christian saints, who are called “foreigners,” and in
the “Church in the Croat People” only Jesus Christ himself rivals in importance
the native Croats saints and blessed martyrs. Finally, ethnoclericalism is
much the same as right-wing political ideology. “Christians must side with the
political right, and right-wing ideology is an imperative for each genuine
Christian who strives in the afterlife toward sitting to Jesus’ right side,” the
Croatian Catholic weekly Glas koncila expounded in July 2001. 9 While being
antiliberal and antisecular, ethnic churches could serve the purpose of the
Cold War anticommunist struggle. Yet the same religious institutions that earlier
earned fame in the West as anticommunist forces have, according to
scholarly research, so far failed to adequately assist democratic transition in
the former communist countries of eastern Europe. 10
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