While principal theoreticians of Orthodox clericism, particularly Nikodim Milaš,[2] tried to identify Serbs with Orthodoxy, Bjelanović, leader of the Serbian National Party of the Littoral, propagated interreligious equality, launching among the popular masses in Dalmatia the slogan "Love your brother irrespective of his religion".
In his editorials and speeches he gave a tremendous impetus to learning by his dedicated search for truth and by his exposition of a critical method.
He was one of the co-founders of the Dalmatian Lazarica Serbian Orthodox Church and headed regularly its Vidovdan (Saint Vitus's Day) councils.
Bjelanović was a contemporary of well-known Dalmatian politicians, members of the Serb-Italian Autonomist Party coalition, and writers such as Đorđe Vojnović, Konstantin Vojnović, Dušan Baljak, Luigi Lapenna, Antonio Bajamonti, Roberto Ghiglianovich, Francesco Ghetaldi-Gondola, Niccolò Trigari, Luigi Ziliotto, and Marko Car, his biographer.
In that book he writes about the time he rode in a railway carriage full of Hungarians, wondering why his fellow traveller, who has just been proclaiming Russia the enemy of civilization, is so unwilling to admit he is ethnically a German.