Returning home

Christian Century, August 11, 1999 by Duncan Hanson

For several years human rights organizations and churches have tried to call attention to the atrocities committed against the Kosovars. From now on, as the number of revenge killings of Serbs by Kosovars mounts, those concerned about human rights will need to speak out also for the Serbs who remain in Kosovo. They are surely as much victims of Serb dictator Slobodan Milosevic and his policies as are the Kosovars.

In the weeks since the end of the war, several Orthodox churches in Kosovo cities have been burned by angry Kosovars in retaliation for the mistreatment they suffered at the hands of Serbs. I visited one monastery that has remained unscathed, partly thanks to a protective squad of Italian soldiers, complete with a tank and an armored personnel carrier. Another reason it has been preserved, however, is that the monks at this monastery, like a number of other brave monks and priests and hierarchs as well as laypeople of the Serbian Orthodox Church, have long been outspoken opponents of Milosevic's policy toward the Kosovars. The monks hope that their Kosovar neighbors will remember how they stood up against the Milosevic regime.

Perhaps even more important for the future of this monastery was the decision of the monks to offer housing to Kosovars who had been driven from their homes by Serb military and police forces. It is easy to imagine that the monks did a lot of praying when they opened their massive wooden doors to the Muslim Kosovars. When the war ended and the Kosovars who had been in the monastery left to return to their homes, the monks decided to give shelter to Serbs and Roma who felt themselves to be endangered. Now these Serb and Roma refugees have also mostly moved on, and the monastery is considering taking in yet a new group.

Is this monastery representative of the Serbian Orthodox Church as a whole, either in Kosovo or in Serbia itself? I can't offer any statistics on how many, either within the church or outside the church, offered active resistance to the Milosevic government. In any case, faithfulness is a theological and not a statistical question. The church may be tested by persecutions and tribulations and many may fall away, but theologically we know that where the true church is there also will always be a faithful remnant. We have seen that remnant in Kosovo.

As I write from a hotel room in Pristina, hundreds of people are gathered on the square under my window, chatting and listening to the rock music blaring from an aging box speaker fixed to a building on the other side of the square. It is a cool night, very pleasant after a hot day. Even though there is no water in downtown Pristina and even though there is a sign in the hotel lobby apologizing in advance in case the electricity goes off, the happy mood of the milling crowd suggests that everything is almost normal again in Europe's newest capital city.

I cannot help thinking of how differently the future must look now for the people of Belgrade than it does for the inhabitants of Pristina. In Pristina the future is open in a way it has not been since the Middle Ages. Nominally, of course, Pristina, like all of Kosovo, still belongs to Serbia, but the Kosovars know that Kosovo will never be returned to Serbia against their will, and they know that they will never agree to it. In Belgrade, on the other hand, eight years of economic sanctions and ten weeks of bombing have not only destroyed that city's economic infrastructure but also, according to reports from Milosevic critics in Belgrade, the spiritual life of the people. They know that as long as Milosevic is the leader of their country they cannot expect their life to return to normal. They also know that Milosevic will never give up power voluntarily.