Symbolic Resistance and Ecclesiastical Silence: The SOC and the 2024–25 Student Protests
This Event Analysis explores the paradoxical role of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) in the wake of the 2024-2025 student-led anti-corruption protests in Serbia. While protestors prominently displayed Orthodox symbols and icons to express moral resistance and national belonging, the SOC remained publicly silent or aligned itself with state power, even engaging in extraterritorial political discourse in Moscow. The analysis argues that the disjuncture between popular religiosity and institutional complicity reveals a process of de-institutionalized religiosity, wherein sacred symbols are reclaimed as civic tools of resistance. The piece explores the themes of civil religion, symbolic capital, and political theology, examining how the SOC's long-standing entanglement with state authority has been challenged by a new form of moral protest rooted in religious semiotics. This analysis draws on theories of civil religion, symbolic capital, and political theology to examine the paradox of public religiosity and institutional silence. It further engages the concept of de-institutionalized religiosity, arguing that sacred symbols can be dislodged from their clerical context and repurposed as civic tools of resistance.
Nikola Gajić
Nikola Gajić completed a BA in International Relations at the University of Belgrade and holds MAs in Southeast European Studies (University of Graz) and Nationalism Studies (Central European University). From 2020 to 2025, he worked at the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade as a researcher for the RECOM project and coordinator of the Memory Program. Since July 2022, he has been a researcher at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in Regensburg, within the KonKoop Research Network. He is pursuing a PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Regensburg. His current research explores the afterlife of ICTY victims’ testimonies in the post-Yugoslav space.