c. 1999 Religion News Service

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia _ Serbia’s Baptists are doing a lot of explaining these days. After all, the world’s best known Baptist is President Bill Clinton.

Reviled variously as a Hitler-like figure intent on destroying the Serb people or as a maniac using missiles to vent his post-Monica sexual frustrations, Clinton is demonized daily in newspapers, radio and television here. “It is not easy for us now. Everyone knows that Clinton is a Baptist,”said one woman who attends the First Baptist Church of Belgrade.”Some Baptists outside Yugoslavia tell me that Clinton is not a real Baptist, but I am not one to judge his righteousness” The Baptist church’s pastor, Alexander Birvis, is irked by the relentless mention made of Clinton’s religious affiliation and claims that leaders of the dominant Serbian Orthodox Church have”very astutely used”it. “When Jesse Jackson was here, no one said he was a Baptist pastor,”said Birvis, 71, a gentle-mannered man who possesses a richer English vocabulary than many native speakers.”They said Jesse Jackson is a world religious leader, a fighter for peace, but never a Baptist.” For centuries in the Balkans, even the most enlightened people have been keenly aware of each others’ religious affiliation. Earlier this decade, in places like Bosnia-Herzogovina, being Muslim, Orthodox or Catholic was often a matter of life or death. So it is understandable that Yugoslavia’s 2,000 Baptists should be sensitive to having their denomination tarred with a broad brush.

With 140 members, the First Baptist Church is the larger of Belgrade’s two Baptist congregations. Identified by a small sign announcing service times and located in a two-story white building on a quiet side street in a residential neighborhood, the congregation has a low profile in a city where Orthodox churches dominate and knowledge of minority faiths is poor at best.

Although there was some talk by extremists casting the conflict as a religious war pitting Western Catholics and Protestants against Eastern Orthodox, Birvis credited Pope John Paul II’s quick and repeated denunciations of the NATO bombing with squelching attempts in Yugoslavia to vilify Western Christians.

After a Sunday (May 23) service _ held in semi-darkness because the previous night’s bombs had knocked out Belgrade’s electricity _ Birvis and four church elders talked about a range of issues affecting the congregation. As the discussion progressed, a sense of frustration at the West’s action gave way to anger at being misunderstood by their fellow Baptists in the United States. “We complained to the Southern Baptist Convention because, as far as we know, they have still not condemned the bombing,”said Vidovic, 41, who leads a local Baptist student movement.

Birvis agreed:”It is disappointing. We still hope that some senators and representatives will speak out, those people who adhere to the real Baptist message we are trying to cultivate.” The elders said they believe that if Yugoslavia were a predominantly Baptist country, NATO’s bombing never would have happened. One man, Elder Milenko Andjelic, views the conflict as having more to do with the Balkans as a region than Yugoslavia specifically. “There is no intrinsic hatred of the Serbs. They hate all of us,”said Andjelic, 45, a lawyer, explaining that he believes the peoples of the region were a hindrance to the eastern expansion of NATO.”There are political, strategic interests at work here.” The First Baptist Church’s leadership has had extensive training, travel and contacts in the West. Two American Southern Baptist missionary families had been living in Belgrade but departed when the U.S. Embassy advised all Americans to do so. Since the bombing began, the elders agreed, they have found it more and more difficult to find common ground with Western Baptists. “I could not communicate with friends in the States that something is wrong,”said Elder Dragutin Cvetokovic, 41, of the weekly e-mail message he sends to about 100 fellow believers, most of them in the United States.”The goal of the war is to prevent a humanitarian disaster but they have created one.” This chasm in perception will likely exist after the conflict has ended. Cvetokovic predicted that missionaries and other Baptist workers will come to Yugoslavia once the bombing ceases. He said local Baptists may find it a challenge to welcome them. “It will be very difficult for brothers and sisters to reconcile what happened,”said Cvetokovic of his congregation. For the foreign Baptists, he continued,”we will become another mission field, another safari. They will overwhelm us with material aid to make up for what they have done. They will try to compensate.” Sitting across from Cvetokovic, Andjelic noted dourly,”Their message will be hard to take.”

DEA END RNS