Revitalization of religion and religiousness in Serbia: Reality or a myth?

pages: 97-117

Abstract

This article has three parts: in the first part the authors discusses two theoretical ways of interpreting revival and revitalization of religion in Serbia. The first way takes religion as a public institution and implies mutual support of religious and non-religious factors, while the other way describes independent, internal religious revival emerging from the very core of religion and church as a divine institution and individual spiritual needs of believers for religiousness (terminal faith). In the second part, the author points to two different interpretations of empirical data on attachment to religion and church in Serbia accumulated in the last thirty years. The third part compares socio-demographic characteristics of religious people from twenty-five years ago and characteristics of contemporary believers. Keywords: revitalization of religion and church, conventional religiousness, Serbian Orthodoxy, traditional religiousness, current religiousness