The hardening anti-Western stance of Greece is both reflected in and being strengthened by the positions taken by the Greek Orthodox Church, reports the New Republic magazine (Dec. 13).
Greek journalist Takis Michas writes that the support Greece gave Serbia during the Balkan wars was one indication of how religion and nationalism is tied up in the wave of anti-Western, and particularly anti-American, sentiment sweeping the nation. These attitudes were on display in early December when President Clinton was greeted by thousands of protesters brandishing stones and Molotov cocktails in Athens.
The current Orthodox leader, Archbishop Chistodoulos, has pushed the Greek church to see the West as the “source of all of Greece’s misfortunes.” In a recent sermon, Christodoulos thundered that the “powerful of the earth commit injustices against the Greeks and ignore the rightful claims of Hellenism.”