Peoplehood and the Orthodox person: a view from central Serbia

Abstract

Practising Orthodox Christians in central Serbia live their liturgical lives within the idiom of Serbian peoplehood. This article probes the ‘people’ (narod) – perceived locally as an historically and geographically rooted ethno‐moral collectivity – as a core concept of belonging which is key for understanding post‐Yugoslav Orthodox life. The ‘people’ functions as a this‐worldly collective identity within which my interlocutors situate themselves as Orthodox persons, and through which they approach the Divine. Threats to Serb identity serve to foreground peoplehood as the supposedly prime site for Orthodox flourishing. Moving beyond state‐oriented analyses of ‘religious nationalism’, the article demonstrates not how ‘nationalism’ can be understood through ‘religion’, but how, to use Orthodox Serbs’ own terminology, faith can be understood through the prism of peoplehood.