Compulsory religious education?
Non-Orthodox groups protest

Controversy is raging around the planned resumption of religious classes in Yugoslavia’s state educational system, with the dominant Serbian Orthodox Church asserting that such classes should be compulsory, while a human-rights group believes this would violate the religious rights of the non-Orthodox.

At the Orthodox Church’s Synodal Council, which met in early November, religious education was the only subject on the agenda, the Keston News Service reported. Since the ousting of former president Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian and Yugoslav governments have announced their intention to reintroduce religious education, which had not been permitted since 1946. The Synodal Council insisted that “religious classes should be implemented in all grades in both elementary and secondary schools as a compulsory subject.”

Responding immediately, Serbian religious-affairs minister Gordana Anicic declared that religious classes should be compulsory in the first grade of elementary school and optional in later grades. President Vojislav Kostunica told the Los Angeles Times that he personally believed religious education should be voluntary. But his government went forward with the plans, and on November 21 the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia criticized the “joint initiative” of Kostunica and the Orthodox Church to introduce religious classes, saying this would “seriously violate the principles of a secular state” and mark the return of the church “from the sphere of personal to public life as a form of indoctrination.” Because the Orthodox Church is the state’s only partner in this venture, the Helsinki Committee considers this a violation of the religious and human rights of the non-Orthodox. The Orthodox Church sharply criticized the Helsinki Committee. “The statement that religious belief is a private matter for every individual and that religious education threatens to make church dogma a foundation of moral education actually represents the fear of Satan and all of his followers for the last six decades,” Church officials argued in a prepared statement.

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