Greece's angry left edges closer to a deeply traditional church
By B.C.
NIKOS, a young man from the northern Greek town of Xanthi, spends his life holding a difficult balance. Like many other Hellenes in their twenties, he is horrified by the social cost of the austerity which the country has had to endure as part of a rescue programme negotiated with its creditors. His political ideas hew towards the leftist opposition party, Syriza, which wants to renounce the memorandum on which the package is based. In his other life, he is an active and articulate member of the national church, who participates in theological debates and helps out at services with his accomplished chanting.
There have been times in recent years when such a balancing act looked almost impossible. Far-rightist groups (including, but not only, the bully boys of Golden Dawn) have at least subliminally used religious rhetoric to rally support for their hard-line xenophobia which treats immigrants as handy scapegoats. Late last year, a video tape came to light in which Nikos Michaloliakos, the Golden Dawn leader who is being prosecuted for forming a "criminal organisation", was heard assessing the country's bishops and describing some as useful supporters. (The prelates immediately renounced the compliment.) All this has reinforced the secularist zeal of many Syriza supporters who want to sever the deep institutional connections between church and state.
In the last few weeks, though, some things have happened which have made Nikos's existence just a little easier. Syriza's fiery leader, Alexis Tsipras (pictured above), has always been regarded as a staunch secularist; he has neither married in church (he lives with his partner) nor baptised his two children. But a few days ago he had a cordial meeting with Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch, and said he saw common ground with the church over issues like migration policy, the environment and poverty. More controversially, Syriza's leadership rebuked a politician in its ranks who made a zany appearance at a local festival dressed as a priest and pretending to serve the Eucharist, the most sacred of Christian rites. To the dismay of some Syriza supporters, a senior party member said that "insulting the holy mysteries" of a religion was unacceptable behaviour.
To some, this shift is merely a pragmatic adjustment by a party which has topped some recent opinion polls and has a chance of taking national power; that may be a good enough reason to edge away from radicalism towards realism and respectability. But Nikos, speaking for a constituency of faith-minded lefties which has equivalents in other European countries, told me he was watching closely to see the terms of the new rapprochement—would it merely be opportunistic, or would the two sides find common cause at a deeper level?
Of course, a left-wing government would bring changes to church-state relations. But the left can't just stick to its old anti-religious positions, because as its electoral fortunes rise, its ranks are expanding to include a lot of faithful Christians. There have been intellectual discussions between the church and the left for decades...the new thing is that many ordinary believers and voters are opting for the left politically and that should create a fertile ground for debate. That said, a lot of Syriza activists don't understand this—not so much because they're atheists, more because they are anti-clerical and oppose the privileges of the church. As for the church, we'll have to see whether it's prepared to go beyond running soup kitchens and look at the deeper reasons why so many people are knocking at its door in desperation. Will its "prophetic word" consist merely of advocating and practising charity, or will it hold to account the people who have reduced Greece to this state?
To people who are outsiders to both, the Greek church and the traditional Greek left may not seem all that far apart. Both camps are intensely suspicious of globalisation. Each is deeply committed to its own understanding of sacred scripture and revealed truth; neither has been very eager to reread those sacred truths in the light of changing realities. So what could they possibly learn from each other? At their best, both religion and radical politics can go to the root of problems by laying bare the deeper reasons why people believe and act as they do. Like the oracle in ancient Delphi whose maxim was "know thyself", they encourage self-examination and self-awareness. At their worst, faith and political radicalism have exactly the opposite effect: they encourage a mentality of victimhood and blaming others for everything that goes wrong.
Perhaps the really interesting question—and this is Erasmus speaking, rather than Nikos—is whether the church and the left will reinforce one another's virtues or compound each other's weaknesses.
