scholarly journals The changing role of the church – Diaconia of the Orthodox Church in Greece during the years of the economic crisis 2010–2018

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vasiliki Mitropoulou ◽  
Niki Papageorgiou ◽  
Esko Ryökäs

The economic crisis in Greece in 2010–2018 caused a deep recession there. Unemployment rose to very high levels, and social distress increased. In this study, we use publically available internet material to present the many auxiliary activities the Greek Orthodox Church used to respond to the situation. Many of them were typical forms of diaconal activity, but new types of work for the church can also be seen in diocesan activities. The Orthodox Church in Greece does not present all the auxiliary activities in public. However, based on the material available, the article hypothesizes that the role of the Orthodox Church in Greek society has changed during the economic crisis. The church became a supporting factor in society.

Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff

This sweeping history shows how the Greek Orthodox Church in America has functioned as much more than a religious institution, becoming the focal point in the lives of the country's million-plus Greek immigrants and their descendants. Assuming the responsibility of running Greek-language schools and encouraging local parishes to engage in cultural and social activities, the church became the most important Greek American institution and shaped the identity of Greeks in the United States. The book digs into these traditional activities, highlighting the American church's dependency on the “mother church,” the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the use of Greek language in the Sunday liturgy. Today, as this rich biography of the church shows us, Greek Orthodoxy remains in between the Old World and the New, both Greek and American.


Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff

This chapter focuses on the state of Greek Orthodoxy in America at the end of the twentieth century. It assesses whether the Church under Archbishop Iakovos overreached in its efforts to Americanize, which alienated the Ecumenical Patriarchate. It analyzes the patriarchate's intervention, which illustrated the administrative limits the Greek Orthodox Church in America faces in its efforts to assimilate. The chapter describes the patriarchate's ability to invoke the transnational character of Orthodoxy in the new era of globalization. It explores the end of the evolution of Greek Orthodoxy into some form of American Orthodoxy through its fusion with the other Eastern Orthodox Churches.


1979 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-52
Author(s):  
Roderic H. Davison

By the treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774, which marked a disastrous defeat of the Ottoman empire by Russia, the Russians were accorded the right to build a church in Istanbul, in the Galata quarter. The treaty further specified that the church was to be under the protection of the Russian minister, who could make representations concerning it to the Sublime Porte. This church, and the Russian right to protect it and to make representations about it, furnished much of the basis on which Russian governments, in later years, built a claim to a broader right to protect the Greek Orthodox Church, even the Greek Orthodox people, in the Sultan's domains. The claims were exaggerated, but since the church in Istanbul was to be ‘of the Greek ritual’, as article 14 of the treaty said, the connexion seemed logical. The Turkish text of the treaty, however, as Cevdet Pasa reproduces it in his history, makes no mention of a church ‘of the Greek ritual’. Instead, his article 14 specifies that this church is to be called the dusugrafa or dosografa church ().


2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 447-449
Author(s):  
Sara Pursley ◽  
Beth Baron

The image featured on this issue's cover depicts a 19th-century Greek Orthodox church in the Anatolian town of Derinkuyu. Decades after the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey that forcibly deported the town's Christian residents, the church would be converted into a mosque. This process is examined in the article by Tuğba Tanyeri-Erdemir, Robert Hayden, and Aykan Erdemir, discussed below, but the photograph also resonates with the themes of diaspora and minorities that run through most of the articles and essays in this issue.


Author(s):  
Alexander Kitroeff

This chapter looks at how the Greek Orthodox Church played a central role in Greek American efforts to shape US foreign policy toward Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus between the 1960s and 1980s. It talks about the Amercanization process of Greek Orthodox Church that not only advocated for Greek interests but for American and Christian values as well. The chapter explains “Ethnarchy,” which when the highest ecclesiastical leader of the church in a given area assumes political leadership. It mentions Stanley Harakas who provided two examples of ethnarchs in the twentieth century: Archbishops Damaskinos and Makarios. Archbishop Damaskinos served as regent from the time Greece was liberated from Axis occupation in 1944, while Archbishop Makarios served as the first president of the Cyprus Republic between 1960 and 1977.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 254-268
Author(s):  
Sergey V. Bazavluk

The author analyzes the ideological views of a group of Russian migrants of the fi rst wave, known as Eurasianists, including N.S. Trubetskoy, P.N. Savitsky, N.N. Alekseeva, L.N. Karsavina and others. The author discusses fundamental elements of the classical Eurasianist program, such as the role of the Orthodox Church and the state in the life of Russia and its society, their attitude to Roman Catholic culture, and their place in dialogue with other religions. In addition, other important elements of Eurasianism noted here are the ideas of pan-Eurasian nationalism, ideocracy, the spatial borders of Russia-Eurasia, the symphonic personality, a guarantee state. These issues are associated directly with the authors of these concepts and with Eurasianism in general. The author demonstrates the continuity with the teachings of the Slavophiles and highlights the special attention that the Eurasians paid to the traditional cultures of Russia. Also noted is the interest in Eurasianism of church circles in exile in Europe. At the same time, the Eurasianists’ critical vies on the “Petersburg period” in the history of the Russian church are highlighted, which are also implicit in Eurasianism as an independent ideological and philosophical line of thought of Russian emigration in the fi rst half of the twentieth century. An attempt is made to show how, through conservative thought, Eurasians tried to form a new type of political identity. This ideological direction with an emphasis on spirituality and special institutions was considered by Eurasians as a prototype of the future statehood of Russia as opposed to the Soviet-Marxist system. In the context of the contemporary Eurasian integration (EAEU), of the current role of the Russian Orthodox Church and external political manipulations around the role of the Moscow Patriarchate, the theoretical views of the Eurasians take on a new dimension.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 547-558
Author(s):  
Roman N. Lunkin

In the article analyzed the social and political consequences of pandemic of coronavirus for the Russian Orthodox Church in the context of the reaction of different European churches on the quarantine rules and critics towards the church inside Russia. The author used the structural-functional and institutional approaches for the evaluation of the activity of the Russian Orthodox Church, was analyzed the sources of mass-media and the public claims of the clergy. In the article was made a conclusion that Orthodox Church expressed itself during the struggle with coronavirus as national civic institute where could be represented various even polar views. Also the parish activity leads to the formation of the democratic society affiliated with the Church and the role of that phenomenon have to be explored in a future. The coronacrisis makes open the inner potential of the civic activity and different forms of the social service in Russian Church. In the same time pandemic provoked the development of the volunteer activity in the around-church environment and also in the non-church circles among the young people and the generation of 40th age where the idea of the social responsibility for themselves and people around and the significance of the civil rights was one of the popular ideas till 2019. The conditions of the self-isolation also forced the clergy to struggle for their parishioners and once again renovate the role of the church in the society and in the cyber space.


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