ABSTRACT
Religion spans politics, social life, ethics, and morality; it is a fundamental force in the lives of human beings. The importance of religion in Southeastern Europe is compounded because it became an area of competing religious influences. Religion teaches the rules of interaction among individuals and the collectivities they form and ultimately establishes behavior towards authority, both secular and spiritual. Like religion, ethnicity cuts across dividing lines established by class, residence, education, and occupation. The addition of religion to the ethno-cultural subcultures of the region yielded a most powerful combination for integration and disintegration, cohesion and division. In the communist-ruled systems of Southeastern Europe, the internationalism of Marxism has been abandoned as a guide to policy formulation and execution, clearly superseded by various forms of nationalism and localism. The complex interaction of religion, ethnicity, and nationalism, together with the development of ethno-national subcultures and hierarchies, produced enduring political values and attitudes in Southeastern Europe.
