The Serbian Orthodox Church as a Political Actor in the Aftermath of October 5, 2000 Milan Vukomanovic ´ University of Belgrade Abstract: This study tackles the place and role of the Orthodox Church in Serbian society, state, and political life after October 5, 2000. Owing to its present “symphony” with the state, the church now offers a new ideological framework and value-system for state institutions such as the armed forces and public education. This new role of the church is particularly emphasized in the current legislation. One could probably refer to the “etatization” of the Serbian Church, with some negative consequences for non-traditional religious communities. The relations with the Macedonian and Montenegrin Orthodox churches have also been discussed in this context. In post- Milos ˇevic ´ Serbia, religious rights and freedoms have been considerably extended, but there is still a great deal of arbitrariness, even completely partial interpretations of the church-state relations. In the concluding section, this article deals with the church’s traditionalist perception of society as narod (the people), with some recommendations as for the possible cooperation between the church and civil society in Serbia. The Socialist Federated Republic of Yugoslavia, a highly secularized society in the 1960s and 1970s, in which the Communist ideology left its mark on the political, as well as on the cultural, national, and religious levels, suddenly faced, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a massive ethno-mobilization, the ghost of nationalism and the politically imposed identification of religion and nation. As a result of this “cultural shock,” one quasi-religious system (communism) gave way to another Address correspondence and reprint request to: Milan Vukomanovic ´, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, C ˇ ika Ljubina 18-20, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia. E-mail: vukomano@hotmail. com This article was written as part of the research project “The Serbian and Montenegrin Army and Serbian Orthodox Church: The Search for a New Identity,” supported by the Norwegian government and conducted by the Centre for Civil-Military Relations (CCMR) a non-partisan non-political and non-profit association of citizens seated in Belgrade. 237 Politics and Religion, 1 (2008), 237–269. Printed in the U.S.A. # 2008 Religion and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association doi:10.1017/S1755048308000199 1755-0483/08 $25.00