Power games of state and church: From misdemeanor to sacrilege

In Gornji Zaostro near Beran, a monument was erected to Pavlo Đurišić, the Chetnik commander from of the Second World War. The bronze statue was installed without permission, on the eve of the assembly dedicated to the Chetnik movement. The president of the municipality, Đole Lutovac, requested immediate removal, referring to the illegality of erecting the monument.

However, instead of being removed, the monument was moved to a nearby one on the advice of Metropolitan Methodius the church. Thus, the dispute moved from the legal to the religious sphere. The Metropolitan's statement "so let them come to demolish the church" directly provoked the state authority, and his announcement "that the god will be placed in the middle of Beran" indicated the wider strategy of the church in this conflict.

In fact, the whole case is like a small theater piece about the relationship of power in society: with night scenes of the installation of monuments, masked actors, ritual gestures and symbolic capital as the main weapon.

That strategy was also mapped by the psychologist Erich Fromm, who saw the existence of two types of religion that fight for our soul, one seeks our surrender, the other our growth; one lives on our fear, the other on our strength.

Fromm's theses about fear as the driver of the collective flight to authoritarianism resonate through the Beran case as through an empty church. It is no coincidence that the bronze Đurišić found refuge in the temple itself. It is an escape from historical facts into the safety of myth, from individual responsibility into collective innocence.

When the metropolitan says "let them come to demolish the church", he is not only defending the monument. It activates that deep, primal fear of chaos that Fromm describes, offering in return a simple choice: either you are with us in the sacred space, or you are against us in the profane world.

It is a classic mechanism of "religion of power", creating a false dilemma where the only alternative to total obedience is total isolation.

Archetype against the law

Jung would see in this an archetypal dance, the figure of the warrior-savior sheltered in the temple becomes more than bronze. She becomes a totem. It is no longer important what Đurišić did, what is important is what he represents.

The church is not just a building, it becomes a symbolic womb that protects and nourishes the myth. And myth, as Jung says, is always stronger than facts.

Thus, an administrative dispute turns into a ritual dance around the golden calf of history. The monument becomes the holy grail, and the struggle for its removal, the struggle between profane law and sacred tradition. Fromm would say, a perfect example of how religion ceases to be a path to freedom and becomes a justification for escaping from it.

Images older than speech sleep deep within us. Archetypes, Jung would say, those age-old matrices of meaning that shape our dreams and fears, our heroes and demons. They are not just the stories we tell our children at bedtime, they are the patterns through which we see the world, invisible glasses that we cannot take off.

Every time a warrior seeks refuge in a temple, an ancient ritual takes place that we have seen a thousand times. It is no longer a man with his biography, it is the archetype of the Hero who flees from the profane law into the sacred space. The temple is no longer just a stone building, but becomes a mythical cave that protects the hero from his pursuers.

But beneath that shiny armor of an archetypal narrative lies a darker truth. Fromm saw how fear creates a desire for surrender, how the horror of freedom creates a need for a master. Monuments are not just symbols, they are anchors for frightened souls fleeing chaos into the arms of authority.

When the priest says "this is a sacred space", he is not only defending the building. It activates that primordial fear of anarchy, of the dissolution of the sacred order. It offers a simple choice, either you are inside the holy walls, or you are in the chaos outside.

It is the eternal blackmail of every authoritarian system: either complete surrender, or complete isolation.

And we modern people with our university degrees and smartphones are no less susceptible to that ancient magic. We can quote laws and regulations, refer to facts and documents, but when the church bells ring, when incense and wax smell, when the holy warrior-protector enters the temple, our reason retreats before the onslaught of archetypal images.

It's no accident. Every government knows that it is easier to rule through myths than through laws. It is easier to activate age-old fears than to build rational arguments. That is why the political struggle is never fought only on the ground of facts, it is always a struggle of symbols, archetypes, unconscious images that move us deeper than any logic.

It is not a conflict between state and church, law and tradition. Two ways of existence are fighting here, one that wants to build a society based on reason and justice, and the other that knows that human souls are hungry for myths and thirsty for heroes. And as long as that hunger exists, warriors will find their way to the altar, and we will applaud them, treading on the laws we wrote ourselves.

Citizen or believer - from the profane to the sacred

It's that dark irony that Fromm understands so well, running away from fear, we fall into greater fear. Seeking protection from chaos, we create deeper chaos. And the church, that eternal mother and jailer, offers us comfort and fetters in the same embrace.

Thus, every conflict between the state and the church becomes a mirror of our deepest conflicts. Every symbol becomes a totem, every square becomes a battlefield, and we are all extras in an ancient ritual that we still don't know how to overcome. Maybe we don't want to.

There is no place where the sacred and the profane do not intertwine like the fingers of a lover. Where does prayer end and politics begin? Where does ritual end and manipulation begin? Those borders have always been as cloudy as the water in which the sky is reflected.

We like to believe that we are modern, that we have overcome those primitive needs for totems and rituals. But just look at how we behave. We still need holy spaces, holy objects, holy people. It's just that our totems are now made of bronze and marble, and the rituals are televised.

It's not by accident. Every society must have its own cement that holds the bricks together. Sometimes it was the blood of the ancestors, sometimes faith in the gods. Today they are flags, anthems, monuments, but the function is the same. These are the anchors that keep us from drifting into the chaos of individuality.

And the church? She is the master of that game. For centuries, she perfected the art of turning the profane into the sacred. He knows how to turn an ordinary stone into an altar, an ordinary man into a saint, an ordinary conflict into a holy war. This is not manipulation, it is a deep social need that the church gives form to.

And what then when the state and the church clash over some piece of land, some statue, some symbol? It is never just a legal issue. It is a conflict between two systems of meaning, two ways of reading reality. One reads the law, the other reads the scriptures. One sees a violation, the other sees sacrilege.

But beneath that lies an even deeper layer. It is not just a struggle of institutions, it is a struggle for the human soul. Who will shape it? Whose stamp will it bear? Will he be a law-abiding citizen or a believer who obeys a higher commandment? And maybe, and that's the scariest thing, it can be both, torn between two loyalties like two divorcing parents.

This is the dark dialectic of the modern state, the more it tries to separate the church from politics, the more it creates space for their intertwining. Because man is not a machine that can divide life into pure categories. In it, everything flows into each other, faith into politics, politics into religion.

And so every monument becomes an altar, every congregation becomes a church, every law becomes a holy commandment.

And we, modern people who pride ourselves on our rationalism, still kneel before those altars, only we call it by different names. We call it patriotism, tradition, identity, but it is still the same old need for the sacred.

This is perhaps the greatest irony of our age, the more we try to separate the sacred from the profane, the more they mix under our fingers like colors on a palette. And maybe it's time to admit, the problem isn't that we can't tell them apart. The problem is that we think we can.

The search for the boss

I'm sitting with my friends in a bar and we're talking about the end of the world. Not the one with fire and flood, but the silent one, which creeps in like fog through the cracks of our beliefs. Jung would say that we are all still cavemen warming ourselves around the fire of stories, only our caves are now made of concrete, and the fires burn on screens.

I watch the cigarette smoke make spirals in the air and I think, there it is, that dance of the profane and the sacred. Fromm knew, there are no pure categories, everything is mixed like gin and tonic in the glass before us. Faith flows into law, law into faith, and we sit in between and pretend to understand the rules of the game.

And the rules? Every system is just another story we tell ourselves to fall asleep at night. The state says, I am your father. The Church says, I am your mother. And we, we are those illegitimate children of the modern age, torn between two loves that pretend to be the only true ones. Jung would have laughed: the shepherd archetype is eternal, we just change his uniform.

Fromm would nod, it's that fear, mate. The fear of freedom that makes us look for a boss. Any boss. With a badge or an epitrachilus, it doesn't matter. Just to tell us what to do, what to believe, who to hate.

And maybe salvation is right there. In that recognition that we are forever torn, eternally crucified between heaven and earth. If there is no clear solution, there is no final victory. Just that eternal dance between order and chaos, between law and myth, between state and church.

And so we sit, drink, and wait for the end of the world, the silent one, which comes on tiptoe through compromises and agreements, through small surrenders and great renunciations. Jung would understand. Fromm would nod. And we, we just sit and watch the smoke rise towards a sky that is no longer holy, but still not just a dark void.

The author is a psychologist, Dragan Radovančević