8 Religion and Democracy in Serbia since 1989: The Case of the Serbian Orthodox Church Radmila Radi´ c and Milan Vukomanovi´ c The return of the holy In late 1980s, after 40 years of social marginalization, the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC), along with other religious communities, returned to the public sphere and political scene in socialist Yugoslavia. In comparison with other Central and Southeast European countries, this return was several years late. The process was very similar but with one major difference: the wars on the territory of the former Yugoslavia that heavily marked the first period of desecularization. Before the polit- ical system itself started to collapse, secularization had already declined due to general mistrust in the Yugoslav state, profound political and economic crisis, and internal disturbances among intellectuals who demanded more freedom in all aspects of social life, including a pro- found reassessment of the past. The social crisis resulted, at least partly, in a latent discontent of the citizens who turned to religion and the Church with strong political dispositions. 1 In socialist Yugoslavia, this process was widely accompanied by ethnocentrism and nationalism, the official rehabilitation of which was needed in order to confirm religion in its traditional role of the keeper of national institutions and values. 2 The shifts within Orthodox Christianity manifested themselves soon after the events in Kosovo of the early 1980s. The expulsion of Serbs from this province, the relationships between Serbia proper and its autonomous provinces (Kosovo and Vojvodina), inclinations towards ethnic myths and symbols, the rise of nationalism, the economic crisis, and many other challenges filled the churches during major holidays, especially in urban settings. The first serious indications of a religious 180