When God Comes to Town

Religious Traditions in Urban Contexts

Rik Pinxten, Lisa Dikomitis, Rik Pinxten, Lisa Dikomitis

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781845459208
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Around 1800 roughly three per cent of the human population lived in urban areas; by 2030 this number is expected to have gone up to some seventy per cent. This poses problems for traditional religions that are all rooted in rural, small-scale societies. The authors in this volume question what the possible appeal of these old religions, such as Christianity, Judaism, or Islam could be in the new urban environment and, conversely, what impact global urbanization will have on learning and on the performance and nature of ritual. Anthropologists, historians and political scientists have come together in this volume to analyse attempts made by churches and informal groups to adapt to these changes and, at the same time, to explore new ways to study religions in a largely urbanized environment.

PART ONE

NATION VERSUS CHURCH

RELIGION AND NATIONALITY: THE TANGLED GREEK CASE

Renée Hirschon

Greece stands out among European societies with regard to the way religion relates to social life. It has been one of the most homogeneous countries in Europe in terms of ethnic and cultural factors and it continues to present itself as such, despite widespread immigration over the past two decades from neighbouring Balkan and Eastern European countries and from the Third World. The continuing entanglement of religious and national identity is a particular feature of the country's modern history, and has had ramifications in all spheres of life. These features must be understood in the context of Greece's emergence as a nation-state in the nineteenth century, when it gained independence from the Ottoman state, which has left interesting residues (discussed below). Ultimately failing in its irredentist aspirations after a military defeat in 1922, Greece's vaunted homogeneity was largely accomplished through the terms of the 1923 Lausanne Convention – a unique international agreement specifying a compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey. This was effectively a programme of mutual ‘ethnic cleansing’, which removed the bulk of the Muslim population from Greece and the Orthodox Christians from Turkey, leaving only a small population in each country as a recognised minority (see Hirschon 2003). The assumption of a common religious and national identity is firmly rooted in public consciousness, and to be Greek it is commonly assumed that one is also an Orthodox Christian (discussed below). It is a distortion to conflate these features; nevertheless it is true to say that contemporary Greek identity is a complicated amalgam of national, cultural and religious features. Greece's continued homogeneity is reflected in current census returns, which indicate that over 90 per cent of the population is Orthodox Christian.

Other distinctive characteristics should also be noted. First, Greece is reckoned to be a nation with a high degree of religiosity. This is revealed in the observance of religious practices of various kinds and, even though church attendance may not have been high (though it has shown a marked increase from the early 1990s, with a decrease after 2005), it is the interweaving of the religious with so many aspects of daily life that strikes the outsider. Second, and related to the first characteristic, is the inapplicability of a sharp separation between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ or ‘mundane’. The classic Durkheimian dichotomy is not appropriate for understanding Greek life, as many anthropological studies have indicated. I have analysed some unexpected aspects of this phenomenon in an urban quarter of the metropolis, as related to house furnishing (Hirschon 1993), seasonal activities, and in the philosophical outlook (Hirschon [1989] 1998, chs. 8, 9).

Similarly, the division between private and public, widely accepted in most Western European countries, assigning the religious to a private sphere, does not correspond to Greek ways of thinking or of practice. Church and state were, and continue to be, inextricably linked on all levels – institutional, official and informal, political, educational and personal. This feature proves to be a major obstacle for progressive reformers who wish to modernise old structures of civil administration (see Georgiadou 1996; Molokotos-Lieberman 2003; Prodromou 1998).

Transformations have nonetheless taken place through the various legislative and economic influences of the past twenty-five years, though their consequences are not always readily perceived (for the ramifications that affect notions of personal identity, see Hirschon, forthcoming). Changes have been provoked through the pressures of European integration (entry to the EU in 1981), and through the modernising programme of the PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) government, which was in power for almost twenty years. The ambiguous value of modernisation is hotly debated: far from being an uncontested area, political arguments about preserving Greece's national character continue in the face of a perceived threat to its consciously prized sovereignty and cultural integrity.

The questions underlying this chapter, therefore, ultimately relate to major issues such as globalisation, modernisation and westernisation, but my focus here is limited to showing how issues regarding religious identity and practice have certain unusual characteristics in Greece. One aspect of these larger processes, the question of secularisation, has a particular complexity in the context of contemporary Greek society. The analysis suggests that a more nuanced approach to the topic of secularisation is required in dealing with those societies that have not followed the western pattern (see Prodromou 1998). This chapter touches on wider issues regarding national identity as well as socio-personal levels of analysis. It is based on experience in the metropolis of Athens-Piraeus, where my activities were not limited to any specific locality but covered a wide range of urban settings and people of different social classes, from Kolonaki to Kokkinia.

Observations of Religious Practice/Religiosity

According to a recently published poll comparing the extent of religious devotion worldwide, Greece stands out among Western European countries in the proportion of its citizens who declare that they are ‘religious’ (86 per cent of those polled). It was among the top ten in the overall survey of sixty-eight countries on all continents.¹ During a two-month stay in Athens (October to December 2005) and again in the spring (March to April 2006), I had the opportunity to observe some aspects of religious practice on a daily basis. People who are used to living in a secular society, whether visitors to Greece, or even diaspora Greeks who have lived abroad, notice the frequency of outwards signs of religious practice while they are in Athens. This kind of ‘diffuse religiosity’ or what Prodromou (1998: 102) calls ‘religious vitality’ is not self-conscious; simply, it is common practice for people to make the sign of the cross when they pass a church, or enter inside to light a candle and venerate the icons, taking a break in the course of other activities to interact with the divine realm.

The city provides many places for such casual unplanned observances. Indeed, the Athenian landscape is marked by the presence of sacred spaces of all historical periods, predominantly around the ancient centre, the rock of the Acropolis and the old quarters of Plaka and Monastiraki. Here, the ruins and excavated expanses, evidence of temples, houses and graveyards from the founding of the city through the classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods are usually what attract the tourists’ attention. But of more significance for contemporary city dwellers are the many churches, some dating from the late Byzantine period, others from the period following the establishment of the Greek state. These little churches set on the main shopping streets, near markets, in small squares, provide points of reference, reminders of the divine realm, which transcends everyday concerns (see Figure 1.1). Small shrines (proskinitaria) also dot the urban landscape, erected to commemorate some event (accident or escape from it) are similar reference points.

Figure 1.1. An Eighteenth-Century Church Near the Main Square of Athens. Courtesy of the author.

Churches abound in all the residential areas of the city, many being of recent construction, often on sites of older churches. These buildings are not mere architectural features, they are set in a system of meaning and belief and they provide a locus for conventional religious practice beyond the home, a place of comfort and recourse for believers. Whereas some Athenians may bewail the decline in religious adherence while others mock what takes place as ‘simple habit’, it is clear that these spontaneous acts of worship constitute an expression of religious activity. It is worth noting that the practice of such religious devotion is public – it is conducted in the eyes of others, beyond the home, and in this way contrasts with the more private nature of much Protestant Christian practice.

Typically, as in other Christian societies, churches are used as geographical orientation points, for example, to designate neighbourhoods, or where stations and stops on public transport lines are named after saints or churches. This holds true for the train, bus, tram and trolley services, as well as for the new Metrolines, in operation since the 2004 Olympics (e.g. two major termini are named for St Dimitrios and St Antonios).

During Lent (Megali Sarakosti), I was struck by the numerous shops and restaurant signs that advertised ‘fasting foods’ (nystisyma), as well as radio and TV shows focussing on the preparation of such dishes. There was a marked public awareness of the Lenten fasting period, unlike the unobtrusive style of an earlier period when I lived in the city. My observation was reinforced by Greek colleagues who noted that this reaction could be interpreted as a kind of ‘cultural resistance’, both to the pressures of European integration and to a consciousness of the standardising process of globalisation. Indeed, we should note that religious practices constitute a major element in what is loosely characterised as ‘Greek culture’, in a society where religion is integral to worldview (see Hirschon [1989] 1998, ch. 10).

The point here is that the presence of the sacred in everyday activity is a feature of Athenian life which strikes the casual observer, but should not be subject to facile interpretations. Nonetheless some devout people who are observant of religious practices express anti-clerical sentiments and criticise the Church as a corrupt institution. This attitude was exacerbated after 2005, following scandalous revelations. Multiple accusations of financial mismanagement, homosexuality and links related to corruption in the judiciary rocked the Church of Greece and, at the time of this writing, were still under investigation. Certain bishops and some clergy close to the late Archbishop were implicated but the internal enquiry resulted in the prosecution of only one Bishop (Panteleimon of Attika), currently subject to an appeal (2008), with insufficient evidence said to have existed in the other seven cases. This was generally held to be a whitewash, produced many critical reports in the national press, and resulted in widespread disillusionment and disaffection in many circles.

Sceptics argue that the practice of going into church to light a candle or of signing oneself with a cross is merely a habit, an empty gesture without any real significance for the practitioner. This view was expressed to me by some educated Greeks who made it clear that they were not churchgoers; indeed, it is more common than in the past to hear urban educated people say that they are atheists. People in this group frequently noted their own contradictory conduct, saying that although they were non-believers they would go to the Easter church services because it was part of their cultural heritage and identity, and also that they enjoyed the experience for ‘aesthetic reasons’. A clear illustration is provided by my historian colleague, a proclaimed atheist, who does not attend church but appears at major church festivals, saying, ‘I'm not a believer, but I'm Greek, so I'm Orthodox’ (cf. a similar example quoted in Ware 1983: 208). This is by no means a unique statement for I have heard such sentiments expressed by other leftwing, educated non-believers.

In dealing with this topic, therefore, it is important to distinguish among people's various degrees of involvement with the religious sphere, and to be precise about those whom we observe and with whom we engage.²

Religion and Identity

The interweaving of what in much of the western world would be seen as separate spheres, the religious and the civil, continues to be a salient feature of contemporary Greece, despite the legal reforms of the past twenty-five years. In 1983, the PASOK government's programme of modernisation introduced major reforms in the Civil Code, especially regarding family law. In particular, civil marriage and divorce were allowed for the first time as an alternative to religious marriage, constituting a radical change: until that time, marriages were contracted and dissolved only through the Church, or the equivalent religious authorities for Jews and Muslims. The new Civil Code also consolidated previous civil reforms, reinforcing the measures for registration of a child specified in Law 344 of 1976. That law had established the procedures whereby a child's name should be recorded in the civil registry office (lyxiarcheio). In doing so, it clarified the distinction between name giving (onomatodosia) and baptism (baptisi) (articles 22, 26) and the issues surrounding registration and naming are of particular interest in the context of this discussion.

In particular, the procedures required to register a child's birth demonstrate the resilience of cultural patterns (‘habitus’ in Bourdieu's terms). It is widely believed that a person's full membership in Greek society requires a record of their religious affiliation. This was essentially a baptismal certificate or its equivalent for the recognised religions, including Judaism and Islam but excluding Catholics who do not enjoy official legal status (K. Tsitselikis, personal communication, 2006; Frazee 2002; and for Orthodox Old Calendarists see Ware 2002: 1–23).³ People have long believed that without a baptismal name – or its equivalent for Jews and Muslims – a child could not be registered and therefore could not be enrolled in school. Public consciousness apparently continues to hold that a child's registration at school requires the registration of a baptismal name/production of a baptism certificate.

In fact, this is a misapprehension because it has long been legally possible to confer a child's name without baptism. It is interesting to note that the possibility of civil registration (without baptism) can be traced to the mid-nineteenth-century Greek Civil Code (Astikos Ellinikos Nomos, TZA’ 1856), a measure that was reiterated in the statute books in 1976 and finally applied strictly after 1983 (see Alivizatos, email, December 2007; Lixouriotis 1986; Stathopoulos 2005). Nonetheless, it is a striking fact that even today the religious rites continue to be practised and only a tiny minority of people use the civil registration alone: the vast majority continue to employ baptism as the means of conferring names (Alivizatos, personal communication, 2006). The same is true with regard to marriage where only a small proportion of couples (5 per cent) prefer to legitimate their bond solely through a civil marriage while the overwhelming majority of couples continue to marry in church and, for a variety of reasons, many have both civil and religious ceremonies.

As already noted, it has long been possible to confer a child's name without a religious rite but in practise this was seldom done. The 1983 law requires the immediate registration of the child's birth in the civil registry office (lyxiarcheion), but a name need not be specified. A child can still be registered in the civil registry without a name until the parents decide on the name, which will be officially registered; after that it cannot be changed. A progressive measure in the 1983 Civil Code allows choice regarding the surname of a child, so that either the mother's or the father's can be conferred (Stathopoulos 2005). Once registered officially, however, the surname cannot be changed. Likewise, if a first name is registered at this time, it cannot be changed (ametaklito), even if baptism confers a different name later (e.g. if Leonidas is the name given at birth and Panayiotis is conferred at baptism, the only legal name is Leonidas). To facilitate the immediate registration of a birth, maternity hospitals in Athens provide registration forms that do not require a child's name to be specified, but only the its sex and parents’ names.

The significance of the distinction between civil and religious naming practice is profound and should not be underestimated for it differentiates membership as a citizen in the state – that is, nationality – from that of religious affiliation. Though this might be a commonplace in Western Europe, from the Greek perspective it signals a radical break with the long-established equivalence of national and religious identity. The secularisation agenda is promoted, too, by the introduction of civil marriage and divorce as legal alternatives to the religious rites (divorce has always been permitted in the Orthodox Church), and both possibilities are provided for equally as options in the 1983 law. In 2005 the Hellenic League for Human and Citizen Rights, a legal pressure group, suggested a more radical initiative in a Draft bill aimed at the full separation of the Church from the state (see below), which proposed, among other measures, that all civil procedures of family law would be compulsory while the religious rites would be optional. The bill's proponents argue that they are following a common Western European model; in fact, it is actually based on the French case, and notably does not correspond with the situation in UK and Denmark which can still be called ‘confessional states’ where there is an established religion.

Historical Features

It is necessary to refer briefly again to Greece's special features in the context of contemporary European society. These can be traced to a specific historical trajectory and to cultural differences dating back to the early centuries of the Christian period when Rome and Constantinople became the two separate centres of the Roman Empire. The different developments of the ‘Latin West’ and the ‘Greek East’ (see Romanides 1975; Sherrard 1959) are crucial considerations in our understanding of contemporary processes of change in this region of Southern Europe and the Balkans, and can only be referred to briefly in this chapter.

Following the conquest of the Byzantine empire in the fifteenth century, the area that now constitutes the Greek state fell under Ottoman rule (for a general overview see Clogg 1979: 8ff). Under the Ottoman system of governance, the subject peoples of the imperial state were granted a considerable degree of communal autonomy if they constituted a group recognised as the People of the Covenant (dhimmis). As such they were organised into millets (literally ‘nations'), the criterion of membership being that of religious affiliation. This was by no means a rigid system, but had varied considerably over time and in different regions of the empire (Augoustinos 1992: 33–38; Zürcher 1993: 2–13). The important point to recognise is that religion provided the basis for personal identity and for group membership. The Orthodox Christians of the Empire, the Romioi/Rumlar, were administered by the hierarchy within the Rum millet, which had jurisdiction over all family and inheritance matters, and even civil disputes (Braude and Lewis 1982). It was religion, not language or ethnicity, that determined a person's membership in the polity (see Kitromilides 1989).

It is an extraordinary irony of history, therefore, that national and religious identities are not separated in Greek consciousness, an approach that resonates with a central feature of the Ottoman past. In fact, to this day, these different criteria of identity can be seen as co-terminus for the vast majority of Greek citizens. What can be seen as a remnant of the Ottoman heritage is further illustrated by the legal status of the Muslims of Thrace. Following the provisions for minority rights entailed in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, these Greek citizens are adjudicated by a mufti under Islamic law for family and personal matters in an odd remnant of the millet system. Many complications arise, however, through the permitted application of two legal codes (see Tsitselikis 2004). Again, it is an unusual fact that Greece alone among Western European countries allows the application of some aspects of sharia law.

The fact that it is religious identity that is seen to confer membership in the body polit...