RELIGION AND POLITICS 1991-1999 - THE MONTENEGRIN PERSPECTIVE
RELIGION AND POLITICS 1991-1999 - THE MONTENEGRIN PERSPECTIVE

Author(s): Šerbo Rastoder
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Politics, Political Theory, Politics and religion, Inter-Ethnic Relations, Sociology of Religion, Wars in Jugoslavia
Published by: CEDET Centar za demokratsku tranziciju
Keywords: Montenegro; church; politics; war; authority
Summary/Abstract: It is possible that the judgments, relying on the recently initiated research of the role of religious communities in the wars that only just have ended and in the process of the dissolution of the SFRY, would prove insufficient and unfo­unded and therefore easily disputed, if they were to rely merely on the analysis of the available documents, and fail to use a comprehensive complementary analysis, as is the case with this paper. Hence, taking into account all the risks, even a superficial analysis nevertheless shows that in the transition of the society from communism to national totalitarianism the church largely played the role of the ideological yeast in the process of national homogenization. In the case of Montenegro the Serbian Orthodox Church perceived the communist heritage as the main reason for Montenegro’s “deviation from the Serbhood and the tradition of St. Sava“. Hence, there is a need for its “restoration” within the national-o­ manticist vision of the “Serbian Sparta“, which would be in the front line of the fight in an “imposed and defensive” war against “Orthodoxy“, for encircling the Serbian national space and the final correction of the “mistake” made in 1918, when, “instead of a Serbian national state44, Yugoslavia had been created. All this accelerated the process of national polarization in Montenegro, which in its turn became an overwhelming limitation to the modernization of its society.

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