Expanding the visibility of the church in the public sphere: the relationship between the orthodox church and Greek society during the era of the Archbishop Christodoulos
Abstract
The Greek Orthodox Church, as the Church of the ‘prevailing religion’ of Greece, has all the typical characteristics of a ‘public church’. With the advent of the Archbishop Christodoulos, in addition to being ‘public’, the Orthodox Church also became a ‘church with publicity’: Like other religions and churches during late modernity, the Greek Orthodox Church and its head gained more presence in the mass media, adopting the language and the technology of the media; finally, they were ‘subsumed’ under the logic of the media. Being based upon empirical data and analysis, we show that the Orthodox Church under the leadership of Christodoulos lost in social acceptance as well as in people with regularly religious practice. Additionally, the Orthodox Church could not stop its waning popularity among Greek youth despite the Archbishop’s continuous efforts to attract them into the Church.
Under Christodoulos, the Orthodox Church gained more in visibility and publicity; however, this gain was not followed by real spiritual influence over society. The phenomenon of a diffuse and loose religiosity, which characterize the relationship between the Orthodox Church and Greek society after the regime change in 1974, was strengthened even further in the decade of Archbishop Christodoulos (1998-2008).
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Γεωργιάδου Β. (2015). Expanding the visibility of the church in the public sphere: the relationship between the orthodox church and Greek society during the era of the Archbishop Christodoulos. Science and Society: Journal of Political and Moral Theory, 21, 129–156. https://doi.org/10.12681/sas.455
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