Serb Orthodox clergy actively supported the genocide and ethnic cleansing

Evidence

In Bosnia, the Serb Orthodox Church made the same mistake the Catholic Church made in Croatia during World War II; it became a servant of religious nationalist militancy. In many instances, Christian Serb clergy have supported the extremists who carried out the genocide in Bosnia and have given ritual and symbolic support to the programs of ethnic expulsion and destruction of mosques. — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 226

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the pattern of religious institutions legitimizing state violence — parallel to the moral-panic literature and to how the Rwandan and Nazi genocides were legitimized by clergy. Links to prior chapter themes in this book about clerical complicity.

Related

• The Bosnia genocide was religious in four distinct, compounding senses (similarity 0.86)
• The Serbian Orthodox Church’s official voice published justification of the genocide (similarity 0.86)
• Serb Church leaders publicly sanctified the architects of genocide as following Christ (similarity 0.86)
• Serb clergy escalated from specific complaints to rhetorical genocide charges (similarity 0.83)
• A priest endorsed killing Muslims even after the Srebrenica massacre (similarity 0.83)
• Croat forces destroyed Orthodox churches but not systematically like Serbs (similarity 0.83)
• Bosnian Muslims were selected for genocide on religious grounds with Western acquiescence (similarity 0.82)
• The Christ-killer charge is a theological problem for all Christian traditions (similarity 0.82)
• Croat Catholic clergy participated in and abetted Ustashe genocide (similarity 0.81)
• Croat and Serb militias jointly dynamited mosques across eastern Bosnia (similarity 0.81)
• Serb nationalist ideology fuses religious identity with race-traitor charges against Muslims (similarity 0.81)
• Religious violence in the post-cold war era is a global, not Balkan, force (similarity 0.81)
• A retrieved Serbian tradition could recast Kosovo’s traitor as the genocidaires themselves (similarity 0.79)
• Resisting genocide requires first confronting one’s own traditions’ crimes (similarity 0.79)
• The anti-Muslim genocide reused the Christ-killer myth once aimed at Jews (similarity 0.79)