The Balkan Churches in the Grip of Transition
The Balkan Churches in the Grip of Transition

Summary/Abstract: When talking about the Church – about churches and religious communities generally – and in any serious research, it is practically the rule to begin with some general observations. One starts from the limit case – which is the end of the modern social order known under the name of Russian Communism. This seems justified, given that the civilisation promised under the sign of the hammer and sickle was supposed to be the very model of an atheist civilisation. The Churches were persecuted, reduced to the space from narthex to altar. They experienced the drama of atheism as a universal phenomenon, along with the model of a secular organisation of the state which even the churches accepted – and all of a sudden, “the return of the sacred.” The churches, particularly in the Orthodox East, suddenly became a social and political force or institution to be reckoned with, one that could not be ignored. This process took place over the widest area and has not yet run its course. To add to the mess, a number of new problems appeared which had been given no consideration even in the churches. We are not here to consider the above-mentioned general problems, and we are well justified in not doing so. We have previously published a number of discussions and essays based on our original research. With regard to the Serbian Orthodox Church, much has been published both in Serbia and in Europe, by researchers, mostly from the historical or the social sciences, on the basis of the archival documentation available to them, and not all the archives are fully accessible, particularly not all church archives, leaving room for further work.

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