SHAPING OF SERBIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY AS CHRISTIAN – CONTRIBUTION OF BISHOP NIKOLAJ VELIMIROVIĆ

Abstract

This article promotes the thesis that the work of bishop Nikolaj Velimirović on turning the Serbian people to the Church is the reason why the contemporary Serbian national identity incorporates orthodox Christianity, as promoted by the Church. When the fact, which was established by Dušan Bandić, that the folks tend to freely interpret the doctrine of the Church due to never completely understood and accepted Christianity and never truly abandoned paganism in Serbian folk religion is taken into consideration, then we cannot think of Serbian identity as essentially connected to Christianity. There were some spontaneous folk manifestations of church spirituality among Serbs, but these were sporadical, both in time and space. From the second half of the 19th century to the World War II spontaneous folk movements towards the Church appeared in reaction to social disturbances, like rebellions and wars, penetration of socialist and liberal ideas and penetration of sects into the Serbian national corpus. Bishop Nikolaj supported and encouraging those pious movements with his writing, most of all the so-called "God-praying" (bogomoljački) movement, that he lead throughout most of its duration. Through his writing, he tried to convey a positive attitude towards Christianity and Church to the readers and to strengthen the connection between Orthodox religion and fate of the Serbian people, through which he shaped the entire Serbian identity as mainly Christian. After the demise of socialism in Serbia, when Velimirović's work appeared in public again in adequate social and political circumstances, Serbian identity finally embraced Orthodox Christianity as its dominant feature.