RELIGION AND POLITICS - THE SYMPTOMATIC CASE OF THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA IN THE 1990s
RELIGION AND POLITICS - THE SYMPTOMATIC CASE OF THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA IN THE 1990s

Author(s): Srđan Vrcan
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Political Theory, Politics and religion, Inter-Ethnic Relations, Sociology of Religion
Published by: CEDET Centar za demokratsku tranziciju
Keywords: religion; politicization of religion; ethnification of politics; the former Yugoslavia; de-secularization; re-traditionalization
Summary/Abstract: In this paper the role of religion and religious communities in the conflicts which marked the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the 1990s in general is analyzed. The author analyzes the structural affinities in the relations between religion and nationalism and registers the turnabout from a substantial separation of the state and the religion and church, and from a secular state and secularized state politics, in the direction of elimination of the strict separation of the state and the religion and church, which implies a gradual dismantling of the secular character of the state. The processes of ethnilication of politics and politicization of the ethnic, within which the aforementioned de-secularization is taking place, reveal the connection between revitalization of religion and intensive renewal of ethno-nationalism. The cultural-political consequence of this process is reflected in the affirmation of a specific type of democracy, the so-called democracy of the sameness, which reconciles the political demands for relativity with absolutistic demands of the religion of a cultural and ethical character.

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