Religious Freedom and the Relationship Between the State and Religious Communities Within the Framework of the Reforms Being Undertaken in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Abstract

After unification into a common state in 1918, all the religious communities in any to enjoy it after the adoption of the “Vidovdan” Constitution, were recognised by a the link between the state and the recognised religious communities by providing special law. There was no proclamation of a state church and the Constitution retained them with the status of legal corporations. Before World War II, Yugoslavia's population was divided between six recognised religious communities: the Serbian Orthodox Church; Roman Catholic; Muslim; Evangelical; Jewish; and Greek-Catholic. After World War II and the communist revolution, laws regulating relations between the State and the religious communities were abolished and this was an area which remained legally undefined. After October 2000, following sixty years of an aggressively atheistic regime’s rule, conditions were created for a new approach to the relations between the state and religious communities. Although the Yugoslav Constitution as well as the constitutions of the federal units contain a certain number of principles relating to religious freedom, a significant number of issues remained outside the legal regulations. According to the results of the 1991 census of the Yugoslav population (excluding Kosovo and Metohija and the municipalities of Bujanovac and Preševo, where the census was not fully carried out), the population breaks down into the following categories of belief: 80% Orthodox (6,988,901); 5.36% Muslims (468,713); 6.1% Roman Catholics (533,349); 1.02% Protestants (89,369); 0.01% Jews (1,008); 0.005% pro-Oriental cults (520); 0.16% other religious communities (14,256); 0.09% believers who do not belong to any particular religion (8,468); 1.95% atheists (170,528); and 5.25% (458,820) who did not reply. Religious discussions between various denominations and governmental officials have been underway since November 2000. One of the frequent themes of talks with the heads and representatives of religious communities was the violation of religious freedom, religious intolerance and assaults on members of the church or religious communities. The long-standing religious communities in the FRY were interested in the issue of denationalization because before World War II, they owned property that was nationalized by a series of laws on expropriation through regulations effecting agrarian reforms, including confiscation, sequestration, and nationalization. Had the Law on Denationalisation been passed in 1991 or 1993, and had the post-war revolutionary laws been annulled (the Federal Law on Agrarian Reform and Colonisation of 23 August 1945, and others), the Serbian Orthodox Church would have been given a part of the property belonging to it in the form of land and other fixed and transportable property on the territory of Kosovo and Metohija.