The southern European country of Greece is a majority Christian Orthodox country, with [Page 482]approximately 93% of its population belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church (GOC) and Orthodoxy declared as the “prevailing religion” in the Greek constitution. Surveys suggest low levels of church attendance relative to high levels of self-declared religiosity. The country's religious situation is characterized by a strong relationship between religion and national identity and between church and state (including tensions in the latter), the increasing presence of religious minorities, and fluctuations in the church's public profile according to changes in church leadership.

A perception of “Greek” and “Orthodox” as coterminous is a historical fixture, not the least from the four-century experience of Ottoman rule, under which non-Muslim subjects were divided into groups according ...