KOLEKTIVNI ASPEKT SLOBODE VEROISPOVESTI
Authors:   University of Kragujevac, Faculty of Law, Đurđević Nenad 
Published: January 2024

By its importance to the greatest number of people, freedom of religion, both historically and in the modern world, has become their universal need and interest, with characteristics that enable and require a greater and more specific presence of law than in the case of the legal treatment of freedom of thought, conscience and religion, into which she herself enters. It is about the so-called absolute human right (the right of personality), for which a person cannot only be punished but also harassed, including forcing him to reveal his religion. Freedom of religion is, above all, man's spiritual sphere, which represents his forum internum. However, unlike freedom of thought and conscience, freedom of religion also has an external component (forum externum), i.e., a collective aspect, the essence of which is the possibility of professing faith in communication and community with other people, publicly and privately, through non-institutional and institutional forms. At the same time, for the vast majority of believers, the freedom to associate with others for the purpose of expressing their faith, that is, the possibility to freely form their own religious community in legally recognized forms, is of the same importance as the right to have a particular religion in general. Freedom of religion, as an individual right, can be annulled if it is not supplemented by the right of a religious group to build an infrastructure that enables individuals to fully enjoy that freedom and the right to autonomy in their internal affairs. The collective aspect of freedom of religion is often connected in practice with state intervention in favor of some, as a rule, majority religious community to the detriment of minority religious communities or with state interference in the internal organizational or personnel issues of a religious community. Many of these cases ended up before the European Court of Human Rights with a decision on the violation of freedom of religion, often with violations of the prohibition of discrimination or freedom of association. The European Court of Human Rights found in all those cases that such a position of the state is contrary to its obligation to act neutrally in relation to all churches and religious communities on its territory, from the point of view of realizing both individual and collective aspects of freedom of religion. The persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate and its clergy by the Ukrainian state and the complete siding with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, which we have witnessed in recent years and especially in 2023, clearly show all the fragility and politicization of the guarantee of the collective aspect of freedom of religion when it conflicts with state and geostrategic interests and policies. We can also add the recent events regarding the adoption of the Law on Freedom of Religion in Montenegro and the conclusion of the Fundamental Agreement between the State of Montenegro and the Serbian Orthodox Church. It can be freely said that the realization of freedom of religion, and especially its collective aspect, for a certain religious community/group in practice most often essentially depends on its relationship with the state authority on whose territory it operates and the model of state-religious community relations applied in a particular state.