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The Serbian Orthodox Church in Serbia's Raška After 2000 Südosteuropa 61 (2013), H. 3, S. 432-452 OPEN ISSUES OF DECENTRALISATION IN SERBIA ALEKSANDER ZDRAVKOVSKI New Ecclesiastical (Dis)order: The Serbian Orthodox Church in Serbia’s Raška after 2000 Abstract. The contemporary confl icts in the Balkans have brought about a genuine growth of religiosity among the people and increased the importance of spiritual organizations. The Serbian Orthodox Church and its leaders closely cooperated with the political parties and governments of both the left and the right. This article surveys the career of Bishop Filaret who is the head of the Mileševa see. It aims to provide evidence that this cleric was able to retain a powerful position in post–Milošević Serbia even though he had been very close to that regime during the 1990’s. Lastly, the analysis will illustrate the negative consequences of the fusion of politics and religion in this part of South-eastern Europe. Ale ksander Zdravkovski is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Sociology and Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. Introduction The end of the twentieth century was marked by a revitalization of religiosity among the peoples of the Balkans. In Serbia, nationalist ideology became preva- lent and was frequently accompanied by a zealous and aggressive manifestation of new political muscle by certain ecclesiastic hierarchs. The Serbian Orthodox Church1 (SPC) is an organization that is prone to corruption, controversies and perilous political manipulations. The activities of the ecclesiastic representatives have created obstacles to the process of building a civic and inclusive society in Serbia. Nevertheless, the Orthodox Church is presently one of the most trusted institutions in Serbia. As a consequence, this issue is notable and important.2 The topic of the relations between religion and politics in the post-communist Yugoslav successor states has been widely discussed and researched. Most no- 1 Srpska Pravoslavna Crkva, henceforth: SPC. 2 Stefano Bianchini, The EU in the Values and Expectations of Serbia, in: Ola Listhaug / Sa- brina P. Ramet / Dragana Dulić (eds.), Civic and Uncivic Values: Serbia in the Post-Milošević Era. Budapest 2011, 77-112. The Serbian Orthodox Church in Serbia’s Raška after 2000 433 tably, the works of Sabrina P. Ramet, Milan Vukomanović and other scholars have examined the activities of the SPC and its ideology in great detail.3 This study is a scholarly att empt to contextualize the activities of the SPC hierarchy in the Southwestern part of Serbia, in the region usually called Raška by Serb historians, authors and intellectuals.4 The local Bosniaks that inhabit the region and form a relative majority there call this part of the country Sandžak. The author would like to underline that he does not claim that the case of Filaret, bishop of the Mileševa diocese, is a paradigmatic one, as this cleric is rather an untypical hierarch of the Church. However, as clerics of the SPC often embody the slogan “where the bishop is, there is the Church”,5 the bishops represent the Church and their conduct represents the policies of the SPC. Furthermore, it is important to emphasize the fact that Filaret was a member of the Holy Synod of the SPC from 2006 to 2009. Consequently, it is not a mistake to claim that an analysis of the activities of bishop Filaret is appropriate when surveying the role of the SPC in the Raška region. This study will give additional substance to the claims that the SPC and its bishops have very close relations with Serbian politicians. In addition, the au- thor will give supplementary evidence that the SPC promoted uncivic values in a region that is well-known for its multi-ethnic character. Lastly, this study of the SPC will further the argument that bishops that have close ties to the political establishment are able to make more decisions autonomously and free of interference of the Holy Synod. As a consequence, these clerics could serve as tools for political parties and infl uential groupings. In this context, the author has conducted several semi-structured interviews in Serbia with politicians and experts on the SPC. The author has also relied on newspaper articles and scientifi c studies for additional research. The au- thor also tried to conduct interviews with the relevant hierarchs of the SPC, but unfortunately none of them was willing to participate. Consequently, this 3 See for example: Sabrina P. Ramet, Religija i politika u vremenu promene: Katolička i pravoslavne crkve u centralnoj i jugoistočnoj Evropi. Beograd 2006 (Centar za ženske studije i istraživanja roda); eadem, Nihil obstat: Religion, Politics, and Social Change in East-Central Europe and Russia. Durham/NC 1998; eadem, The Way We Were – and Should Be Again? European Orthodox Churches and the “Idyllic Past”, in: Timothy A. Byrnes / Peter J. Katzen- stein (eds.), Religion in an Expanding Europe. Cambridge 2006, 148-175; Milan Vukomanović, The Serbian Orthodox Church as a Political Actor in the Aftermath of October 5, 2000, Politics and Religion 1 (2008), no. 2, 237-269. 4 See for example: Slavenko Terzić, Raška oblast i sandžačko pitanje, symposium, Beograd, 27.10.2011. A video of his presentation at the symposium is available at <htt p://www.youtube. com/watch?v=oQWeEtcig_w>. All Internet sources were last accessed on 13 September 2013. 5 See for example: Beseda Episkopa Gerasima, Episkopija Gornjokarlovačka, available at <htt p://eparhija-gornjokarlovacka.hr/Novosti-00025-L.htm>. This mantra is derived from the Latin saying “Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia” which means “where Peter is, there is the Church”. 434 Aleksander Zdravkovski study will utilize the communiqués and materials available at the offi cial web page of the SPC. Historically speaking, Raška is of great importance to the Serbs. In this part of the country, the medieval Serbian Kingdom was established by King Stefan the First-Crowned at the beginning of the thirteenth century.6 Following the Ott oman conquest of the Balkans, the Raška region was divided into a number of administrative units that have undergone a substantial evolution through time.7 Ultimately, Serbia and Montenegro managed to get hold of Raška after the First Balkan War (1912/13). During the twentieth century, this region witnessed the slow but steady emigration of the local Muslim population, primarily to Turkey.8 Many local Serbs have also emigrated abroad or to other parts of Serbia during the last hundred years, mainly due to economic reasons.9 The region is divided in two dioceses of the SPC. The diocese of Mileševa has its administrative center in the Mileševa monastery near Prijepolje. The diocese of Raška-Prizren and Kosovo-Metohija is based in Prizren.10 This study will not address the developments in the latt er eparchy. The “Red Bishop”: Filaret’s Reign in the Diocese of Mileševa The Serbian president Slobodan Milošević and his apparatus tried to wield control over the Serbian media and use them to spread propaganda against their enemies. Indeed, Serbian newspapers and TV stations frequently produced war-mongering reports with the aim of bolstering the “patriotic” feelings of the Serbs.11 Some hierarchs of the Church participated in this orchestrated propaganda. The SPC relationship with the regime of Slobodan Milošević was marked by mutual distrust that evolved from time to time into tactical cooperation. 6 Jovanka Kalić, Raška Kraljevina, Zbornik radova Vizantološkog instituta 41 (2004), 183-189. 7 Dragica Premović, Sandžak, administrativna jedinica u okupacjonom sistemu u Staroj Raškoj (Paper presented at the symposium Historical and Cultural Processes in Sandžak / Stara Raška, Bosniak Cultural Community, Prijepolje, 03./04.12.2010. 8 Safet BandŽović, Iseljavanje Bošnjaka u Tursku. Sarajevo 2006; idem, Balkanski muha- džirski pokreti u historiografskom kaleidoskopu, Almanah 35/36 (2006), 155-192, 182-191. 9 Interview by the author with Vojin “Voja” Vučićević, president of the management board of the humanitarian organization Stara Raška, Belgrade, 13.06.2012. 10 An up-to-date map of the territorial units of the SPC is given in: R. Dragović, U Saboru više vladika, Večernje novosti, 11.10.2010, available at <htt p://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/ aktuelno.69.html:303408-U-Saboru-vise-vladika>. 11 More information on this topic can be found in: Kemal Kurspahić, Prime Time Crime: Bal- kan Media in War and Peace. Washington/DC 2003, chapters 2, 3 and 4; Svetlana SlapŠak / Hari Štajner, Rat je počeo na Maksimiru, govor mržnje u medijima, analiza pisanja Politike i Borbe, 1987-1991. Beograd 1997. The Serbian Orthodox Church in Serbia’s Raška after 2000 435 The president of Serbia and self-declared leader of all Serbs was a former communist apparatchik and an ardent atheist. During the 1990s, he diligently tried to co-opt some of the left-leaning hierarchs of the SPC into his nationalist movement, which aimed to “unify the Serb lands”. He was to a certain extend successful in this regard. One of his closest collaborators in the SPC was Filaret (Jelenko) Mićević. Filaret Mićević was elected bishop of the diocese of Mileševa by the Holy Assembly of the SPC in May 1999. According to one of the most prominent Serbian experts on the SPC, Mirko Djordjević, Filaret did not have the ap- propriate education and background to be enthroned as head of the Mileševa diocese. Djordjević claims that the election was politically motivated and that the conservative faction within the SPC pushed for Filaret’s election to the prestigious post.12 To verify these assertions, it is necessary to detail the activities of the future bishop of Mileševa during fi rst part of the Milošević era. The fi rst reports on Filaret’s activities were published in the late 1980s, when Serbia was engulfed by a nationalist, Kosovo-centered hysteria.
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