The Relationship Between Confessional Belonging, Religious Self-Identification and Inter-Ethnic Distance in Former Yugoslavia
The Relationship Between Confessional Belonging, Religious Self-Identification and Inter-Ethnic Distance in Former Yugoslavia

Summary/Abstract: The paper examines the existence, intensity and the direction of the relationship between the confessional belonging, the degree of subjective religiosity and inter-ethnic distance two years before the violent breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Empirical foundation of the research is the data base of the Consortium of Yugoslav social sciences' institutes from 1989-1990. The main finding of the paper is that the ethnic distance between the members of three most numerous confessions in the Balkans, Orthodox, Catholic and Islamic, that is between the members of respective nationalities, Serbs, Croats and Muslims, was notable two years before the outbreak of the war. Even when the Catholic and Orthodox respondents verbally denied the significance of the spouse's national belonging in two fifths of the cases, and the respondents belonging to all confessions negated the importance of the work colleague's national belonging in somewhat lesser percentage, they themselves were rarely in mixed marriages and have only scarcely preferred the members of some other nationality for the work place colleague. Respondents Yugoslavs, who in the three fifths of the cases asserted not having an confession, proved to be the most open toward all other nationalities and were the most popular as spouses and work colleagues, immediately after the members of locally majority nation and confession. Albanians, who identified themselves as members of Islamic confession in more than 90% of the cases, were the most closed toward members of other nationalities and confessions and were the least preferred among others. Two additional facts testify to the significant degree of uncertainty and mistrust among the members of three confessions two years before the war. First, members of all three confessions have in more than two fifths of the cases partially and completely agreed that safety was possible only in the milieu in which live the majority of the members of one's own nation. Second, alongside with almost three fifths of the three main confessions' members, more than two fifths of those without confession accepted the statement that cooperation can exist between nations, but never the full trust, as well. The rule is noticed, along with several significant and indicative deviations, that respondents reporting that they were convinced believers or that they believed but not in everything that their faith taught, belonging mostly to working layers, attached greater significance to national belonging of the spouse and of the work colleague in one fifth of the cases more often than the respondents that reported that they were indifferent toward religion, that they were not religious or that they were against religion, preponderantly members of middle and upper social layers. The difference in the attitudes of respondents that reported opposite degrees of their religiosity, however, proved to be much smaller (only around ten percentages) when it was the question of the saf

• Details
• Contents