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5 Orthodox Values and Modern Necessities: Serbian Orthodox Clergy and Laypeople on Democracy, Human Rights, Transition, and Globalization Klaus Buchenau Any society needs a certain amount of shared values in order to function . This is true even for individualist and pluralist Western societies, which have reduced the set of common values but insist on so-called core values such as tolerance, justice, freedom, mutual respect, and human dignity. There has never been a catalogue of mandatory western core values, but usually democracy and a respect for human rights are included. From a standard western point of view, globalization and, in the case of post-socialist societies, transition are processes which spread these core values into other parts of the world. Since large parts of the western elites tend to see “their” value model as universal , they view both globalization and transition in a positive way, some criticism of the accompanying economical injustices notwithstanding . In post-socialist Europe, this universalist model is often challenged by a coalition of religious and secular nationalists. For the purpose of this chapter, I will call them anti-westerners, because the West is their principal “other” against which they declare the counter-values. Other value conflicts are harder to detect. This is true in cases where the western core values are accepted in principle but (often unconsciously ) modified. Serbian clergymen, who adhere to this current, I will call moderates. The distinction between anti-westerners and moderates may seem somewhat strange if one keeps in mind what observers usually write about fractions in the Serbian episcopate. They talk about currents and call them the Greek, Serbian, or Bosnian current.1 The problem with these distinctions is that their relationship with value systems is impossible to define. Between the two world wars, anti-westernism developed most strongly in Serbia proper, i.e., among the “Serbian current,” while during the post-Yugoslav wars it was associated with compara- tively moderate views. In the 1980s, the “Greek current” (viz., theologians that had studied in Greece) was regarded as anti-western, but presently it is often held as a “pro-European” factor. In post-Milošević Serbia the “Bosnian current” is considered the most anti-western, though the Bosnian clergy has previously played only a minor role in the discourse about the “evil essence” of the West and had nothing to offer but nationalism. This does not mean that the “Bosnian,” “Greek,” and the “Serbian” currents are terms without a meaning. They stand for local mentalities and personal networks, but not necessarily for stable value orientations. When using the terms “westerners” and “moderates,” I do not have in mind a stable circle of persons. Rather they characterize two basically different models of thinking, between which individuals sometimes shift during their lifetime, and between which compromises are possible. In general, value modification is a normal process since values do not exist as a given “fact.” A value is not a concrete wish, but a notion of what we find desirable. Thus, it is an abstraction; in order to apply it in a concrete situation, we need to interpret it.2 If whole nations are to adopt a certain set of values, they will do so much more successfully if the values can be linked to already existing values and to national tradition. By linking, the content of the value may be altered, though to many politicians who talk about “European values” this is not clear. Some western core values change their content systematically when being transferred into post-communism. There is, for instance, a strong tendency to interpret democracy either as a stage of material welfare or as the dominance of the titular nation, while the accompanying notions of minority rights, gender equality, or tolerance, are less easily accepted. It would be unjust to blame only the post-communist elites for this. The process of EU enlargement was and is directed not only by objective criteria, but also by (geo)political interests. In a situation where the European Union deliberately invites the Balkan countries because this seems to be the only way to stabilize the region, the local elites are tempted to present legal reforms as social reality, i.e., as functioning values. But laws and values are not the same. The former can be declared in a political act, but people and their values change at a much slower pace and do not necessarily follow in the intended direction . In this framework, the Serbian case is quite special. Since the beginning...

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