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

Since Serbia’s political transformation following the fall of Milošević, the country has been locked in an ongoing struggle over identity, sovereignty and geopolitical direction. The Serbian Orthodox Church has become much more than a religious institution; it is a key player in public discourse, frequently at the centre of controversies including LGBT rights and the ‘culture wars’, the response to the pandemic, and reactions to the student-led protests that followed the Novi Sad tragedy.

Rather than standing ‘above politics’ as a neutral moral authority, the Church is deeply involved in a complex network of state ties and transnational Orthodox geopolitics. Its rhetoric portrays liberal reform as a foreign imposition, secular expertise as an ideological threat, and civic mobilisation as a form of external destabilisation.

This brief considers whether the Church’s consistent alignment with the Russian Orthodox Church makes it an instrument of Russian influence or an independent actor whose agenda simply overlaps with Moscow’s. Drawing on three case studies, it argues for the latter: convergence rather than subordination – a distinction that matters both analytically and for policy, since treating the Church as a mere Russian proxy obscures its own domestic, Serbian roots and the polarising influence that stems from them.

Author: Richard Straka