1 Old challenges put to the test: the Greek Orthodox flock and the Church of Greece in an era of global – and local – change Maria Efthymiou University of Athens The late 20 th century witnessed a profound change in the demographic and social realities of Greece. In less than a decade – and especially in the years immediately after 1989 and the collapse of Communism in central, south-eastern and eastern Europe – hundreds of thousands of immigrants crossed the borders into Greece, many of them illegally. Although they settled in most of the towns and villages of Greece, it was Thessaloniki and Athens that received the bulk of the new-arrivals. At the turn of the 21st century, there were 762,191 registered immigrants in Greece, of whom the clear majority (438,036) were from Albania, the rest being divided among over a hundred nations, including Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Russia, the Philippines, Iraq, Pakistan, India, Egypt, and the states of sub-Saharan Africa. 1 Several aspects of these developments have no precedent in the history of Modern Greece. Perhaps most importantly, Greece had for a long time been a land of emigrants rather than immigrants. In a country where the memory of family members leaving the devastation of post-war Greece in search of a job in the US, Germany, or Australia was still fresh 2, the influx of so many foreign would-be-workers came as something of a surprise. Of course, the arrival of almost one million immigrants (if we include those living in Greece illegally) – and in such a short period of time – would 1 National Statistical Service of Greece, census of March 18, 2001, Table 7. See also Α. Κόντης , “ Η Ελλάδα χώρα υποδοχής µεταναστών ” [Kontis, A., “Greece, a recipient of immigrants”] in Στ . Κωνσταντινίδης – Θεόδ . Πελαγίδης , Ο Ελληνισµός στον 21 ο αιώνα [Konstantinidis, S.– Pelagidis, T., Hellenism in the 21st century ], Papazisis Publications, Athens, 2000, pp.292–324. 2 Εθνικόν Κέντρον Κοινωνικών Ερευνών , Απόδηµοι Έλληνες [National Centre for Social Research, Greeks Living Abroad ], Athens 1972, which contains information pertaining to Greek communities, schools, and Greek Orthodox churches in some 180 countries. See also Social Science Centre, Essays on Greek Migration , Athens, 1967. 2 entail enormous changes in any country with a population of under eleven million 3. For a country like Greece, these changes were to be especially profound. Greece is no stranger to abrupt demographic changes. For centuries, Greeks had lived in larger or smaller numbers around the coasts of the Eastern Mediterranean, Asia Minor, the Balkans, and the Black Sea, i.e. in places long under Ottoman and Russian rule. Consequently, the dissolution of these empires and the formation of nation-states during the second half of the 19 th and first half of the 20 century was to have serious repercussions on their communities. Forced by circumstances or national governments, hundreds of thousands of Greeks left their ‘homelands’ to seek shelter in Greece, which had been officially established as an independent national state in 1830. 4 The most dramatic of all these changes occurred during the third decade of the twentieth century, following the peace treaty signed in the aftermath of the 1919-1922 war between Greece and Turkey. Defining nationality along religious lines – Orthodox Christians being considered Greek, and Muslims Turkish – almost the entire Greek population of Turkey were forced to migrate to Greece and virtually the entire Turkish population of Greece to Turkey. Just short of half a million Turks and roughly one and a half million Greeks were uprooted in a population exchange unprecedented in European – let alone regional – history. 5 These events, along with a smaller population exchange between Bulgaria and Greece 6, forced the Greek state to seek urgent solutions to the problem of providing accommodation for so many people at short notice during the 1920s and 1930s. However, it also made Greek society into something of a human laboratory, creating 3 National Statistical Service of Greece, Greece in figures , Athens 2003. According to the 2001 census, Greece had a population of 10,964,020. 4 Ιω . Χασιώτης , Επισκόπηση της ιστορίας της νεοελληνικής διασποράς [Chasiotis, I., A survey of the Modern Greek diaspora ], Vanias Publications, Thessaloniki, 1993. See also Clogg, R., (ed), The Greek Diaspora in the Twentieth Century , Palgrave, 2001, and chiefly Clogg’s own article in the same, “The Greek Diaspora: the Historical Context”, pp.1-23. 5 Ladas, S.P., The Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey , The MacMillan Company, New York, 1932. See also Pentzopoulos, D., The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and its Impact upon Greece , Mouton and Co., Paris 1962. 6 See previous footnote. 3 an almost purely national state, 94% of whose inhabitants shared a common language, and a staggering 97% the same religion: Greek Orthodoxy. 7 Thus the influx of immigrants during the last decade of the 20 th century brought almost seven decades of a unique religious homogeneity to an end, since only a minority of the immigrants come from Christian Orthodox countries such as Bulgaria, Romania and Russia. The great majority come from primarily Muslim countries, such as Albania, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, and most of the nations of sub-Saharan Africa. Some tens of thousands of Polish and Filipino Roman Catholics, plus some thousands of Indian Hindus, complete the variegated picture. 8 To date, Greek society has paid little attention to the religious aspect of the immigrant issue, for the simple reason that these impoverished and desperate people came to Greece as financial immigrants, without the least intention of promoting or drawing attention to their religious beliefs and dogmas. That said, however, the change in Greece’s religious backdrop is already a reality. And by an ironic twist of fate, it is the Muslim and Roman Catholic faiths – with which Greece has, historically, had the most complex and fraught relations – that Greek society is required to cope with at the turn of the 21st century. The relationship between the Greek Orthodox and Muslim faiths has a long and turbulent history. Centuries of Ottoman Muslim rule in the past, plus a number of unresolved issues with the Turkish state today have led to a degree of bitterness— expressed in Greek textbooks, historical works, and newspaper articles—towards matters related to the Muslim faith, the Ottomans, and the Turks. That said, the Greeks do have a history of peaceful coexistence with Muslims in various countries in the Eastern Mediterranean, especially Egypt. A large, dynamic, flourishing Greek community played a key role in Egypt’s economic, financial and social life from its base in Alexandria during the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20 th century, until Nasser expelled all foreigners from the country in the 1950s. Having 7 See Dimitri Pentzopoulos, op. cit, pp.125f. See also Κώστας Σκορδύλης , « Μειονότητες και προπαγάνδα στη Β. Ελλάδα κατά τον µεσοπόλεµο· µια έκθεση του Γ. Θ. Φεσσόπουλου » [Skordylis, K., “Minorities and propaganda in Northern Greece between the wars: a report by G.T. Fessopoulos”], Ίστωρ [Histor] 7 (1994), 43. 8 See footnote 1. 4 lived in a position of social superiority over the Arabs, Greeks look back on this shining chapter in their modern history with nostalgia, and on the Muslim faith – at least in connection with the Egyptians – with neutral memories and feeling. 9 In fact, the mass immigration of the 1990s did not put the Greeks’ feelings towards the Muslim faith to the test, for the simple reason that the Iraqi, Pakistani, Egyptian, Black African and Kurdish immigrants are both few in number 10 and generally calm people who work in the fields and city markets. Moreover, the Greeks are sympathetic towards the Kurds, whom they view as victims of Turkish oppression and Turkey’s violent assimilatory policy. 11 The situation is different with the Albanians, who constitute the great majority of all Greece’s immigrants, both legal and illegal. The majority of Albanian immigrants are Muslim, only a small minority – mainly those from the south of Albania, many of whom are, in many cases, of Greek origin – being Christian Orthodox. There is also a small Roman Catholic minority from the North of the country. 12 If the large numbers of Muslim Albanian immigrants were ardent devotees of their faith, the situation might well be different. However, the Albanians have never been rigid in religious 9 On the Greeks of Egypt, their economic and social situation, see Kitroeff, Al., The Greeks in Egypt, 1919–1937: Ethnicity and Class , Ithaca Press, London, 1989. See also Karanasou, F., “The Greeks in Egypt; from Mohammed Ali to Nasser, 1805–1961”, in R. Clogg (ed), op.cit, pp.24-57. 10 See footnote 1. On the feelings of the Greeks towards the Muslim and Roman Catholic immigrants see Αικ . Μιχαλοπούλου , Πάρις Τσάρτας , κ.ά., Μακεδονία και Βαλκάνια : Ξενοφοβία και ανάπτυξη [Michalopoulou, A., Tsartas, P. et al, Macedonia and the Balkans: xenophobia and development ], Alexandreia Publications, Athens, 1998, pp.179-191. 11 On the immigrants and their relations with Greek society, see Kontis, Α., op. cit. See also Άννα Τριανταφυλλίδου , « Οι “ άλλοι ” ανάµεσά µας . Ελληνική εθνική ταυτότητα και στάσεις προς τους µετανάστες » [Triantafyllidou, A., “The ‘others’ among us. Greek national identity and positions on the immigrants] in Ίδρυµα Σάκη Καράγιωργα , Κοινωνικές ανισότητες και κοινωνικός αποκλεισµός [Sakis Karagiorgas Foundation, Social inequalities and social exclusion ], Athens, 1998, pp.488-498. This issue is also given extensive coverage in Michalopoulos, A., Tsartas, P. et al, op. cit., which provides useful and comprehensive statistics as well as thorough analysis. 12 See footnote 19. 5 matters, taking a similar attitude to the various religions they have adopted down the centuries.13 Given the Albanians’ loose and pragmatic approach to their faith, a new social phenomenon – sometimes serious, sometimes less so – made an appearance when thousands of Albanians started to make the perilous and illegal crossing into Greece to settle in Greek cities and villages in the late 1980s and early 1990s.