The Serbian Orthodox Church and the Politics of Polarisation in Contemporary Serbia

Since the political transformation that followed the fall of Milošević’s regime in October 2000, Serbia has been engaged in a prolonged battle over identity, sovereignty, and geopolitical orientation. Within this contested landscape, the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) has emerged not only as a religious institution but also as a key player in shaping public discourse. The Church has repeatedly found itself at the heart of divisive national controversies, including debates over LGBT rights, the so-called ‘culture wars’, responses to the Covid-19 pandemic and reactions to student-led protests against corruption and authoritarian governance, following the tragedy in Novi Sad.

Rather than functioning as a neutral moral authority ‘above politics’, the SOC operates within a dense web of clientelist state relations and transnational Orthodox geopolitics. Its rhetoric often frames liberal reforms as foreign impositions, secular expertise as ideological aggression and civic mobilisation as externally orchestrated destabilisation. This pattern is indicative not only of domestic political dynamics, but also of the ideological alignment between the SOC and the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), particularly in the context of geopolitical polarisation since 2014 and 2022.

This policy brief therefore addresses the following key question: does the SOC’s consistent alignment with the ROC render it an instrument of Russian influence, or is it an independent national church whose domestic agenda simply coincides with Moscow’s? The central argument put forward is that the evidence suggests the latter: not subordination, but convergence. This distinction is substantiated by the three case studies below and developed in full in the concluding section. It is important to establish this both analytically and in terms of policy, because treating the SOC merely as a Russian proxy misrepresents its polarising role and the leverage that stems from its domestic, Serbian roots.

Author: Richard Straka