The Orthodox Church of Greece: policies and challenges under Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens (1998–2008)

Abstract

This article concentrates on the discourse on the ‘return of the Church’ which came to the forefront of public life in the late 1990s with the enthronement of Archbishop Christodoulos (1939–2008) as Archbishop of Athens and All Greece. His career will serve as a case-study of an attempted ecclesiastical resurrection, during a period of progressively conservative change in the mood and politics of Greek society. More specifically, the article will discuss (a) Christodoulos's specific understanding of Orthodoxy as a political and cultural tradition, (b) the rhetorical manipulation by which this ‘Orthodoxy’ discourse contributed to the further development and re-inscription of modern Greek national ideology, (c) Christodoulos's populist approach to the youth as an unprecedented kerygmatic trope and (d) his ambiguous attitude towards post-modernism that problematised the very identity of Eastern Orthodoxy.