CREEDE HINSHAW: Christian vs. Christian in Montenegro sullies Christ’s name

It is rare when an account of the installation of a national church leader also includes descriptions of burning tires, tear gas, riot police, arrests, injuries and the religious leader arriving in a military helicopter. Such was the case recently in the bitter, ongoing religious strife in the small Balkan nation of Montenegro, about the size of Connecticut and perched on the Adriatic Sea.

Various accounts of recent clashes in Cetinje between supporters and detractors of the Serbian Orthodox Church have left me unsatisfied and confused. Most of the names of the people are spelled with too many Js and Vs and Zs and Ks, and I had to google Montenegro to remind myself it lies between Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo (a nation recognized by only 97 members of the United Nations, but that’s another confusing story) and Albania. My wife and I once drove through Montenegro close to 50 years ago when that whole region, with the exception of Albania, was known as Yugoslavia.

My guess is that the religious conflict goes back at least hundreds of years and involves wounded national and tribal pride and ethnic sensibilities. There is much animosity in that Slavic region, the atrocity-filled civil war of late last century being the most egregious recent manifestation of ethnic hatred.

Metropolitan Joanikije, the newly installed leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church, said it would take time to overcome the ethnic, political and religious divisions in Montenegro. That was probably a drastic understatement. The violence was Christian against Christian.

As far as I can understand, the strife can be traced back to long-lasting tensions between the Montenegrin and Serbian people, a division that runs squarely through the church. The most ardent Montenegrins want their own Montenegrin Orthodox Church, preferring to have nothing to do with the Serbian Orthodox Church. But complicating their desire to disassociate themselves from the Serbs is the sad truth (for these ardent separatists) that a majority of Montenegrins trace their religious heritage back to the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Trying to understand another nation’s religious complexities, I bravely slog on, reading one article after another, all the while understanding less. Every other sentence leads to more things I can’t seem to grasp. Take, for instance, this description of newly installed Metropolitan Joanikije, “He is a respected church figure and was a close ally of Amfilohije …” This is the last straw: Having no idea whether Amfilohije is a person, place or thing and weary of googling another reference, I quit.

What I would love to read is how, in such a tempest, the church would or could be an arbiter, a reconciler of peace, a “demonstration project” of how to tear down the dividing walls and heal bloody, warring tendencies. I would love to read how the people of faith walk together toward that city of God not created with human hands. But that’s not what happened last week. At a 500-year-old monastery in a young, tiny European nation the name and image of the Prince of Peace was sullied.