L'Eglise orthodoxe et la diaspora hellénique

Abstract

Today the Greek diaspora is located mainly in English-speaking countries in both northern and southern hemispheres. The Greek Orthodox Church is a central institution of this diaspora, at all parochial and diocesan levels, and also on the world scale with its patriarchates, especially the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. In the face of a rapid anarchic growth of independent communities at the beginning of the 20th century, the Ecumenical Patriarchate established two strong archdioceses, one in New York and another in Sydney. In Europe in the 1960s, while the number of migrants was on the rise particularly in Germany and England, seven autonomous metropolitan units, located in different capitals, were created by the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Africa has its own patriarch of Alexandria, with 13 metropolites heading Churches which are more and more Africanized. The Orthodox Church, which was already the core institution for the Christians during the Ottoman Empire, has maintained its Byzantine structures through the centuries. A repressive environment has anchored Orthodoxy deep within Greek identity. With its strong bureaucratic structure at the diocese-archdiocese level, Orthodoxy has a layered confederal organization of self-governed parishes on the one hand and autonomous or autocephalous Churches on the other. It usually compromises with the democratic spirit of the communities, but can be challenged by them. These community structures are another main component of the Greek identity coming from a pre-Christian stratum, the ancient city-state. These two models of political organization continue to compete within the diaspora even though the first model is now predominant.