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role of religion in society and politics
ESSAY ON THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY
ESSAY ON THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY
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Multiculturalism: Christian Orthodox Serbs in Balkans
Being a part of a certain culture means having common ground with some other people. Most of the time we are not even aware that we belong to a certain culture, but every human being belongs somewhere, and not only to one group but to more of them. Our beliefs, customs, traditions, place of birth, religion can determine our belonging to a group. Christianity itself is everywhere in the world and even though long time ago it was one religion; branches of Christianity are countless today. Three most important branches of Christianity are Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodoxy even though Orthodoxy is less known in western world. The main division of the church occurred in year 1054, when church separated in two branches, Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and this event is known as east-west schism. Culture I chose to talk about is culture I am part of as well, is Serbian Orthodoxy and believers with origins from Balkan area. The reason I chose this culture to talk about is because they differ from every other religious culture in their own customs, traditions and beliefs and because religion interferes in their everyday life, even politics.
Religion is a very sensitive topic, especially in the part of the world called Balkans. When we are talking about religion it is a part of someone’s spiritual life and people are mostly educated about it and they know the reason why do they call themselves Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc. When we go to Balkans, territory of ex-Yugoslavia, religion is a part of someone’s spiritual life, but it is also connected to political beliefs and it is usually determined by birth. Balkan has three major religions and people usually relate it to their ethnicity...
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...ately it will take long time to settle peace among all Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, but with new generations coming, the bigotry itself will fade away.
Works Cited
Wilmer, Franke. “Identity, Culture, and Historicity: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF ETHNICITY IN THE BALKANS”. World Affairs, Vol. 160, No. 1, Ethnicity and Politics (SUMMER 1997), pp. 3-16. World Affairs Institute. Heldref Publications. JSTOR archive. Web.
Fr. Dosenovich.”Specifics of Serbian Orthodoxy”. Orthodox Research Institute. Calendar of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the United States and Canada. 1986.
Majstorovic, Steven. “Ancient Hatreds or Elite Manipulation: MEMORY AND POLITICS IN THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA”. World Affairs, Vol. 159, No. 4 (SPRING 1997), pp. 170-182. World Affairs Institute. Heldref publications. JSTOR archive. Web.
Official web page, “Crkveni calendar” (trans. Church Calendar)
In 1992 (and with resolutions created earlier) Kosovo's Albanian majority also voted to secede from Serbia and Yugoslavia, hoping to unite with Albania. The conflict in Kosovo could be seen as t...
The last two decades of the twentieth century gave rise to turbulent times for constituent republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, eventually leading them to split apart. There were a number of damaging aspects of past history and of the political and economic circumstances that contributed to the breakup and eventually caused the situation to snowball into a deadly series of inter-ethnic conflicts. Yugoslavia was reunified at the end of the war when the communist forces of Josip Broz Tito liberated the country. Under Tito, Yugoslavia adopted a relatively liberal form of government in comparison to other East European communist states at the time and experienced a period of relative economic and political stability until Tito’s death in 1980. In addition to internal power struggles following the loss of their longtime leader, Yugoslavia faced an unprecedented economic crisis in the 1980’s. As other communist states began to fall in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, some former Communist leaders abandoned communism and founded or supported ethno-national parties, blaming the economic suffering on the flaws of communism and other ethnic groups. The ethnic violence that followed would not have been possible without the willingness of politicians from every side to promote ethno-nationalist symbols and myths through media blitzes, which were especially effective due to low levels of education in the former Yugoslavia. Shadows of the events of World War II gave these politicians, especially the Serbs, an opportunity to encourage the discussion and exaggeration of past atrocities later in the century. The ethnic violence in the former Yugoslavia can be traced back to a series of linked damaging factors such as the de...
Slobodan Milosevic and many others who were born in WW2 have had troubled childhoods, Milosevic’s parents committing suicide which would traumatize any adult . He rose through the ranks of Tito’s communist party and survived the late 60’s purges where he became a close ally to the 1980’s party leader Ivan Stambolic. When Slobodan Milosevic was president of Serbia, Time Magazine interviewed him in 1995 just after the Dayton peace accords. His interview focused on four key actions that were affecting former Yugoslavia. Firstly, the atrocities that ethnic Serbs were perpetrating against Bosniak’s. Secondly his national speeches that focused on Serbian nationalism that gained him enough power to force the party leader Ivan Stambolic out of office. Thirdly his alliances with Serb nationalists and paramilitaries in other states such as Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia had implicated him in sending military munitions to these nationalists. Fourthly, the Time Magazine interview is important because it show’s Milosevic’s Machiavellian nature as someone who will lie directly to people on atrocities that his government had been supporting to sustain his power.
...s it liable and unique. It is descriptive and provides a lot of information but in the same time it is also analytical because it presents different aspects and primary sources of the Serb’s history. The parts of the book which relate to the origins of the First World War and the Balkan crisis are focused on the conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary, so it does not analyze all origins of the War, but it does analyze in depth the influence of Balkan nationalism for the outbreak and provides a large number of evidences for his arguments. The book compares and contrasts political and cultural history of Serbs and it is credible and objective. Relating to the First World War he also provides many primary sources and perspectives of different scholars. The book is authoritative and it is easy to notice that Corovic is an acknowledged expert on the subject.
Velikonja, Mitja. "In Hoc Signo Vinces: Religious Symbolism in the Balkan Wars 1991-1995." Springer 17.1 (2003): 25-40. Print.
Thaci, H 2013, Thaci: Kosovo’s Strides Toward Freedom Are Inspired by America’s Founding, Roll Call, date retrieved 15th May 2104
Communism was a strong standing form of government in Bosnia, lasting for almost 50 years. However, the fall of communism was shorter, spanning 3 years, from1989 to 1992. The fall began with the end of the long lasting Cold War, along with the deconstruction of the physical barrier that was a sign of separation - the Berlin Wall. Tearing down the walls of communism in countries around them led to the break up and the collapse of Y...
Hoare, Marko A. "Bosnia-Herzegovina and International Justice: Past Failures and Future Solutions." East European Politics and Societies 24.191 (2010). SAGE Journals Online. Web. 18 Apr. 2011.
- Review of reasons why there was a split between the Serbs, Croats and Muslins.
Brenda Katten who is the chairman of the Zionist Federation said that, “As Jews, we are quite horrified at what is going on: we lost a lot of our people in the 1930s because the gates were closed on us- What is sad, is that we don’t learn from our history.” (3) This seems to be the recurring theme about genocides: They happen and are an immense tragedy but yet they continue to happen throughout time and all over the world. In the Bosnian genocide in 1992-1998, another group was was exterminate by a group for specific reasons. In this case, an estimated 200,000 Bosnian civilians were killed (2) by Serbians. But all of this conflict can be traced back to the resolutions which transpired at the end of the second world war. (1) After Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, and Croatia became apart of Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, when the Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito died in 1980, the union between the several countries under the Yugoslav power seemed to be threatened to separate. When a Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic provoked a dissatisfaction between Serbians in Bosnia and Croatia and their Bosnian and Croatian neighbors, lead to an insuming war. When Milosevic was elected president of the republic of Serbia in 1989, an oncoming movement violent uprisings of several Serb nationalist political parties in neighboring Croatia. These events frightened the other members of Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, which lead to their uncertainty towards the future of the republic that had just recently been established. As fears engulfed many civilians, a large population of non Bosnian Serbians began to not only boycott the voting of Milosevic, but urge others to take similar measures in March of 1992. These actions lead to the sec...
Rueschemeyer, M. (1998) Women in the politics of postcommunist Eastern Europe. New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.
Gagnon, V. P. (2004). The myth of ethnic war: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
Juka, S.S., Kosova: The Albanians in Yugoslavia in Light of Historical Documents. New York, NY: Waldon Press, Inc., 1984
For the purposes of this study I have defined cultural identity as the feeling of self-definition an individual has which is formed through a sense of belonging to a certain group. In this presentation I will be looking specifically at the effects of religion to this sense of cultural identity.