Eating, Eschatology, Expectation: Fasting and Salvation in Serbian Orthodox Christianity

Abstract

Practising Orthodox Christians in the central Serbian town of Kraljevo ‘work on’ their salvation by striving to live a ‘liturgical life’ structured around attending the Divine Liturgy, taking Divine Communion regularly, and fasting. However, in these committed churchgoing circles there is little explicit eschatological discussion about the Second Coming. The paper argues that the intensity of fasting practices in the liturgical everyday not only produce more proximate expectations, but also provide potential glimpses of the Divine now, thus removing the emphasis on a far-sighted eschatological vision. With a concerted focus on working on oneself in the present, the liturgical day-to-day does not need an abstract, sequential future to imbue it with meaning. But, just as such a lifestyle is a path to salvation, so too it produces social differentiation: churchgoing Orthodox find themselves out of kilter with contemporary Serbian society.