Pregledni rad
https://doi.org/10.5559/di.20.2.12
Position of Churches and Religious Communities and Exercise of Freedom of Worship within Serbian Constitutions
Dragan NOVAKOVIĆ
; Ministarstvo vjera Srbije, Beograd
Sažetak
The paper concerned sets out the provisions of various
Serbian Constitutions, which have been enacted in order to
regulate the position of churches and religious communities,
as well as the freedom of worship within the period of the
contemporary Serbian statehood, also including the
constitutional acts covering relatively long periods since
Serbian involvement in different forms of the Yugoslav
unions. Owing to the fact that a legal norm does not come
to be out of nowhere and does not function based on its own
principles, it was necessary to locate the entire process of
promulgation of a constitution within some wider social and
historical context providing better overview of the efforts
exerted by the Serbian political and intellectual elite to find
out the best possible form of state, which would be based on
democratic principles and make it possible to attain
continuous economic growth and cultural development. The
analysis of original constitutional texts clearly demonstrates
an uninterrupted progress in the matter of the freedom of
worship, starting from the basic possibility of following up
one’s own religion, passing through the period of
establishment of the position of Serbian Orthodox Church within the state as well as the right of other confessions to
feel free and protected in exercising their activities, up to the
harmonization of constitutional provisions relating to this
rather sensitive field with the most important International
Law documentation and the EU Acquis. The research work
relating to the constitutional documentation and to the
specific conditions in which the Serbian state has functioned
either autonomously or in union with others, provide an
outlook of one of the most significant periods of Serbian
history, headed at the beginning by a despot, based on the
oriental set of values, devoid of any institutional mechanisms
to protect the basic human right to live, up to an
independent state determined to build its future within the
framework of the European Union, following in the tracks of
the best democratic traditions.
Ključne riječi
Serbia; Yugoslavia; constitutions; freedom of worship; churches; religious communities
Hrčak ID:
69569
URI
Datum izdavanja:
15.6.2011.
Posjeta: 3.276 *