The position of the Serbian Orthodox Church to the regime of Slobodan Miloševic: The ideal of symfony between church and state versus reality

The presented work deals with the topic of the relationship between the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) and the regime of Slobodan Milosevic in the years 1987 - 2000, which is a topic that has scarcely been elaborated upon in academic circles. It specifically deals with the concept of symphony as an Orthodox ideal of the arrangement of relationship between the Church and the state in the SOC policy towards the Serbian political leadership of that time. The thesis illuminates the origins and the essence of this concept and defines the adjustments which it went through in the Serbian milieu. In comparison to the original concept of symphonic interaction between the Church and the power of the state, the author establishes the core alteration as the addition of a national aspect and the creation of an organizational triad of nation, Church and state, which became a characteristic feature of the Serbian Orthodox theology. Based upon the analysis of SOC discourse, the treatise then refreshes the proposition that the symphony of Church and state, taking into account specific attributes, forms a key framework that has influenced and to this day to a certain extent still influences the SOC policy and its approach to a particular political power and regime