Political power and religions in the Balkans

This article by Asterios Argyriou examines the historical relations between political power and religions in the Balkans, using as its guiding thread the evangelical distinction between what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God. The author adopts a historical and theological approach, tracing the structuring role of Orthodoxy from the Byzantine Christianization of the Slavic peoples to the formation of national states in the nineteenth century, passing through the Ottoman period. He shows how the Orthodox religion, initially the cement of a common identity in the face of Muslim domination, gradually became a national Orthodoxy, inseparable from Balkan political projects. The theological contribution of the article lies in its critique of this confusion between religion and secular power: the author argues that the Churches betray their vocation when they defend the rights of a single community to the detriment of others, instead of defending the universal dignity of every human being.