THE 1932 YUGOSLAV DRAFT CHRISTIAN-BAPTIST CHURCHES BILL
THE 1932 YUGOSLAV DRAFT CHRISTIAN-BAPTIST CHURCHES BILL

Summary/Abstract: As one of the constitutionally adopted religions within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, in accordance with the then established normative model that in addition to one comprehensive piece of legislation on general matters concerning religion, each of the officially recognised faiths were to be regulated by a separate statute, at the very beginning of 1932, the Yugoslav Baptist Church lodged with the Ministry of Justice its Draft Christian-Baptist Churches in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia Bill. The paper wishes to analyse the provisions of this document both with reference to the statute concerning ‘traditional’ Protestant churches (two Lutheran and one Calvinist) enacted during King Alexander I dictatorship regime, used as the model in preparation of the Baptist Draft Bill, as well as regards the wider social context. In its introduction, the paper presents the legal position of Baptists in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In conclusion, in addition to an overall evaluation of the Draft Bill, the paper tries to distinguish some of the possible reasons why the Baptist Churches Bill had never been enacted, having in mind that the same is true with respect the Old Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church despite extensive negotiations on a concordat, as well as an overall interconfessional statute.

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