The study of folk Orthodoxy in Serbia: Between the legacy of Dusan Bandic and lived religion studies

The article begins by summarizing the main legacy of Dusan Bandic, a Serbian ethnologist/anthropologist of religion, which includes the concepts of folk orthodoxy (Serbian: ??????? ???????????) and the folk religion of Serbs (Serbian: ??????? ???????? ????). These concepts are reviewed through the socio-cultural and political contexts of contemporary post-socialist and post-Yugoslav Serbia and further compared with the concept of lived religion, which was introduced in anglophone studies of religion three years after Bandic conducted fieldwork research that served as the basis for the formation of the folk orthodoxy concept. The concept of lived religion may bring multiple benefits to the deeper understanding of the worldviews of common Eastern Orthodox believers. Its analytical framework enables us to comprehend the connection between embodiment, materiality, emotions, and narratives as formative elements of religious experience. Within this framework, we search for Eastern Orthodoxy as it is being lived by its believers in their homes, everyday discourses and practices, slava and other religious celebrations, cemeteries, monasteries and other everyday and/or holy places, and view it as not as the opposition to the official Eastern Orthodox Church?s teachings but rather as its expression in a concrete context.