The University of Notre Dame Australia ResearchOnline@ND Arts Book Chapters School of Arts 2009 Greek Orthodoxy in Australia Anastasios M. Tamis University of Notre Dame Australia,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/arts_chapters Recommended Citation Tamis, A. M. (2009). Greek Orthodoxy in Australia. In J. Jupp (Ed.). The encyclopedia of religion in Australia (pp. 477-492). Melbourne, VIC: Cambridge University Press. This Book Chapter is brought to you by the School of Arts at ResearchOnline@ND. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arts Book Chapters by an authorized administrator of ResearchOnline@ND. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. GREEK ORTHODOXY IN AUSTRALIA By Professor Anastasios M. Tamis, School of Arts and Sciences The University of Notre Dame 1.0 Introduction More than three million Greek Orthodox people exited Hellas, during the last four hundred years, in an effort to fulfil their personal ambition to amass wealth or to survive as the consequence of a long period of foreign domination and financial constraints. They have settled almost in every single neighbourhoods of the world, thus forming the Hellenic Orthodox Diaspora. The term Diaspora was first used by Thucydides to describe the exile (dispersion) of the people of Aegina by the Athenians ( Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, and II.27 ). Greek Orthodox, despite their temporary or permanent expatriation to foreign lands for any reason, continued to maintain cultural, political, economic or social relations with their country of ancestry and descent. During this period, Greek expatriation has been an intense phenomenon claiming more than 40% of the Greeks residing, at any given time, outside the national borders of Greece or Cyprus.