Righteous Nations and Just Warriors: Pro-War Theologies in the Serbian Orthodox Church (1990-2000)

Through a qualitative analysis of a large body of work published by the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) during the period of the Yugoslav Wars, this article identifies and presents a specific political-theological metanarrative about the wars that the SOC propagated in these publications. Primary sources include all issues of the SOC’s official publication Pravoslavlje from this period, as well as the collection of texts The Lamb of God and the Beast of the Abyss, published by a subsidiary of the SOC in 1996. I divide this metanarrative into three larger narratives – one on Serbian nationalism, one on the Kosovo mythos, and one on Just War theology – presenting and analyzing each in turn before concluding with a summary of the overall metanarrative, and its role in justifying the Yugoslav Wars, as well as war crimes committed by the Serbian side.