Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

great migration of Serbs from Kosovo to Habsburg lands in 1690, Serb bishops
launched several anti-Uniate campaigns that resulted in the ravaging of
the Marča monastery by Serbs in 1739. In 1785, Croatian Uniates of Serb,
Vlach, and Ukrainian descent founded a new diocese in Krizˇevci.
In the nineteenth century, as Drago Roksandić pointed out, the first conflicts
among Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats occurred as a consequence
of “building religious identity into the foundation of national identity and
the development of mass (secular) nationalism.” 58 During this period, secular
liberal nationalism was predominant in nationalist movements and often
in dispute with antiliberal “clericalism.” The nineteenth century and
early twentieth century also witnessed the first “ecumenical” movements
seeking unity of Christians Serb and Croat clergy united in 1848 against
Hungarian nationalism. Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs were called on
for cooperation and possible unification in a South Slav federation by the
eminent Austrian philanthropist and church leader of Croatian descent,
Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer (1815–1905). Strossmayer sympathized with
Pan-Slavism, as did his precursor, the Croat Jesuit theologian Juraj Krizˇanić
(1618–83), and both prelates considered the rapprochement between Roman
Catholicism and the Orthodox church a key precondition for the fulfilment
of Pan-Slavic ideals. From 1896 to 1903, Croatian and Slovene ecumenical
enthusiasts, backed by the archbishop of Sarajevo, Josip Stadler, published
the ecumenical journal Balkan in Zagreb and Sarajevo. The most important
ecumenical organization in interwar period was the St. Cyril and St. Method
Movement, active in Zagreb and Ljubljana. In the 1920s, Protestant ecumenical
advocates founded the ecumenical associations known as “Life and
Work” and “Faith and Order.” These enjoyed support from the then influential
Serbian Orthodox Church. In communist Yugoslavia, ecumenicaloriented
clergy were considered patriotic, and Bishop Strossmayer was appropriated
by the nation’s patriotic ideology of “brotherhood and unity.” The
most notable ecumenical activities (perhaps the most dynamic and extensive,
if not the most successful in history) had been accomplished under communism
in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65).
16 balkan idols