The Church of Serbia – It’s Not an Insult, It’s the Official Name

Written by Darko Šuković

“Catholicism just isn’t for everyone, man – especially not for Slavs. They’re barely cut out for Orthodoxy as it is. Slavs, particularly those in the south, are more of a natural phenomenon or a geographic expression than a human breed”.

Only someone whose mind has been thoroughly scorched by the ideology of Svetosavlje could read that line from Basara’s Kontraendorphin as genuine praise for Catholicism or a dismissal of Orthodoxy. As with every page of the novel, this great Serbian writer is brilliantly mocking myth-driven thinking and religious fanaticism.

The very next sentence, ironically, might come as a relief to the very mythomaniacs and ignoramuses Basara is confronting. The ones who’ve made collective superiority over their neighbors the blueprint for personal happiness:

“You see, Slavs–especially those in the south – just can’t abstract space. That’s the root of it. For Croats, it manifests as an obsession with hell. For us Serbs, it’s an obsession with Greater Serbia. Which, when you get down to it, amounts to the same thing...”

In case it’s still not clear: this Serbian author is unequivocally telling the Serbian public–the faithful, the voters – exactly what he thinks of what their politicians have been selling them for the past 40 years – and what they keep voting for. Greater Serbia = hell.

I never thought I’d need to “translate” Basara from Serbian–until these past few days, when I realized how many people around here struggle to understand Montenegrin. In at least two cases (and likely more if I watched TV or consumed social media firsthand), people–writers, no less, reacted to the term Church of Serbia as if it were some kind of insult.

Calm down, gentlemen. No need to get nervous–or to misuse the name of a religious institution headquartered in Belgrade, Republic of Serbia, as a kind of punishment. The explanation is simple: the Ecumenical Patriarchate – the supreme canonical authority in Orthodoxy – uses the term Church of Serbia.

Let’s be honest: it’s not like the Patriarch in Phanar (Constantinople/Istanbul–Republic of Turkey) is insulting a sister church when he addresses it as the Church of Serbia. Even after it completely turned its back on him and became a vassal of the Moscow Patriarchate, church leaders continue to speak to one another with the utmost formal respect.

Using the term “Church of Serbia” on Antena M is not an insult – it’s a factual designation, grounded in the principle that our journalism is informed by reading and knowledge, not hearsay or blind faith. It would be offensive if we were to refer to that religious organization as a “sect” or something crude like “autofecal”. As you’ve surely noticed, we avoid vulgar, obscene, and ultimately un-Christian language, which, ironically, is commonly used by followers of the Church of Serbia, often echoing the tone of the Metropolitan who occupied the throne of Saint Peter of Cetinje for decades.

Rather than appreciating that someone is reading books on church history and canon law, the clergy of the Church of Serbia choose to take offense at Antena M. If they had ever sincerely believed in playing an emancipatory role in Montenegro – as we were promised back in 2020 by the golden media sponsors of the litije from the Vijesti media group – the Church leadership would now be recommending our articles as required reading for their undereducated priests and zealous followers.

Instead – and tragically so – the faithful are not being guided into Orthodoxy, but into Svetosavlje in the (hijacked) churches: a militant, nationalist ideology that shares little with the teachings of Christ.

And that is precisely why the Church leadership and its loyal followers find the term “Church of Serbia” offensive, while they’re perfectly comfortable with “Serbian Orthodox Church.” The patriarch and his clergy behave more like national operatives, and “Serbia” alone feels too small for their ambitions. That’s why they meet with Putin in the Kremlin to discuss redrawing the borders of the Western Balkans, and why some spiritual degenerate from the band named “Beogradski sindikat” can appear on N1 – of all channels – to call for Serbia’s spiritual renewal, modeled after the Montenegrin processions known as “litije”.

Let’s repeat it: “Church of Serbia” is not an insult, and no reasonable person uses it that way. One day, when both the clergy and congregation are led by true believers, the Church will embrace that name and carry it with pride across the Orthodox world.

And when that day comes, I fully expect Antena M will receive a plaque of gratitude for helping steer an over-politicized and ethno-nationalist Serbian Orthodox Church back toward the path of genuine Orthodoxy.