{"id":6258,"date":"2022-02-19T23:11:44","date_gmt":"2022-02-19T21:11:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/?p=6258"},"modified":"2022-10-01T19:11:22","modified_gmt":"2022-10-01T16:11:22","slug":"deepening-divisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metacpc.org\/en\/deepening-divisions\/","title":{"rendered":"Deepening Greece\u2019s Divisions: Religion, COVID, Politics, and Science"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sotiris Mitralexis | The Press Project<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of being a time of unity and solidarity, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be a time of disunity, a time for deepening Greece\u2019s divisions after a decade of crisis \u2014 on a spectrum ranging from politics to religion, and more importantly on the public discourse on religion. The present article offers a perspective on recent developments \u2014 by (a) looking into how the Greek government weaponized science in the public square, by (b) examining the stance of the Orthodox Church of Greece, by (c) indicatively surveying \u2018COVID-19 and religion\u2019 developments that would not be covered by the latter, and last but not least by (d) discussing the discrepancy between these two areas of inquiry in an attempt to explain it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weaponizing Science: \u2018Respectable citizens\u2019 versus \u2018the Sprayed Ones\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discussing the pandemic and religion in Greece necessarily passes through the country\u2019s conceptualisation of \u2018science and religion\u2019 \u2014 and, arguably, the commencement of this fierce public debate in February 2020, even before <\/em>either the institutional Orthodox Church of Greece or the religious \u2018facts on the ground\u2019 could provide any indication on how the \u2018Church and COVID-19\u2019 saga would unfold in practice, acts as an indication for how this conceptualisation preceded <\/em>actual events. However, before embarking on an examination of the role of religion<\/em> in this story, it is important to set the conceptual stage as far as science <\/em>is concerned. It would be anything but controversial to note that, across a number of countries, European and otherwise, the tendency of governments to legitimise emergency measures by reassuring the public that they are \u2018simply following the science\u2019 effected a certain confluence of politics and science, much to the detriment of science\u2019s authority as an essentially apolitical practice of strictly following the scientific method. However, Greece\u2019s case was a rather extreme one (in tandem with the extremity of its particular COVID-19 measures in an EU context, at least as measured by the COVID-19 Government Response Tracker by the University of Oxford\u2019s Blavatnik School of Government<\/a>); not only did the government feel the need to justify its every <\/em>action or omission as having been dictated by \u2018the scientists\u2019 \u2014something that the very medical scientists sitting at the governmental expert\u2019s panel have at times publicly refuted<\/a>\u2014, but every political disagreement with particular <\/em>governmental measures were touted as a fruit of science-denying conspiracy theories. This science-undermining political strategy negated the very possibility of scientific counter-proposals to the handling of the crisis, since these had <\/em>to be conspiracy theories (of which, of course, Greece also had ample quantities), or else an apolitically scientific government would have taken them into account: for example, Stanford University\u2019s Professor John P. A. Ioannidis (who was at some point professor and department chair at the University of Ioannina, Greece, and thus has an audience in the country) was explicitly named an \u2018enemy of the people\u2019 and a \u2018conspiracy theorist\u2019 (\u03c8\u03b5\u03ba\u03b1\u03c3\u03bc\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2=sprayed one) by government-friendly media<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it happens, Greece has a peculiar vocabulary for \u2018conspiracy theorists\u2019, one more akin to \u2018tin foil hat enthusiasts\u2019. Following an international trend (with the proper temporal delay for the arrival of trends in Greece), discussions on \u2018chemtrails\u2019 \u2014\u03b1\u03b5\u03c1\u03bf\u03c8\u03b5\u03ba\u03b1\u03c3\u03bc\u03bf\u03af\u2014<\/em> made their appearance in the farthest fringes of Greek public discourse in the early 2000s; the \u00fcber-minuscule number of people actually claiming that chemicals are being used on the population via condensation trails, i.e. that \u2018they\u2019 [it\u2019s always an impersonal \u2018they\u2019] \u2018are spraying us\u2019 via chemtrails, \u00ab\u03bc\u03b1\u03c2 \u03c8\u03b5\u03ba\u03ac\u03b6\u03bf\u03c5\u03bd\u03b5\u00bb, were henceforth pejoratively named \u2018the sprayed ones\u2019, \u00ab\u03c8\u03b5\u03ba\u03b1\u03c3\u03bc\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9\u00bb, or \u00ab\u03c8\u03ad\u03ba\u03b5\u03c2\u00bb more recently, in abbreviated form. (Interestingly, the \u2018chemtrails\u2019 conspiracy theories entered parliamentary debates: a Parliamentary Question to cabinet ministers on \u2018mysterious chemtrails\u2019 was submitted<\/a> by an MP in November 2010. That MP, Makis Voridis, is today the Minister of the Interior in Kyriakos Mitsotakis\u2019 government, occupying one of the top cabinet positions).\u03a8\u03b5\u03ba\u03b1\u03c3\u03bc\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf\u03b9, <\/em>\u2018the sprayed ones<\/a>\u2019 is a much more frequently used phrase than \u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03c9\u03bc\u03bf\u03c3\u03b9\u03bf\u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03b9, \u2018conspiracy theorists<\/a>\u2019 in Greece, as a Google search would readily indicate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue here is that this terminology (again, the equivalent of \u2018tin foil hats\u2019 or \u2018believers in reptilians\u2019) has been officially used by the Greek government against the Greek people, or at least \u2018some\u2019 of them \u2014 rather than against a minuscule minority of actual believers in the most far-fetched conspiracy theories imaginable. None other than Greece\u2019s Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, used the word on 31 October 2020, in one of his ever-more frequent TV \u2018addresses to the nation\u2019<\/a>, lambasting the \u2018few sprayed ones\u2019 who criticise \u2018scientists\u2019: \u2018let us leave the scientists out of any controversy whatsoever \u2026 legitimate political criticism is to be limited to politicians\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The flagrant irony here, of course, is that the Greek government\u2019s version of \u2018trusting the Science\u2019 acted as precisely one of the main agents of undermining science\u2019s credibility in Greece\u2019s public sphere at large. I am not referring here to the question of internal coherence in exclaiming that any government follows \u2018the Science\u2019 in the singular, with a capital S and in a purportedly apolitical way (or to the political reactions that such a claim of apolitical governance would engender ipso facto<\/em>): after all, were there to be a singular Science which would be apolitically followed to the letter by responsible governments, then no variations in the handling of the crisis whatsoever would be encountered among the \u2018responsible countries\u2019, something which is countered by as simple observations of reality as the COVID-19 Government Response Tracker by the University of Oxford\u2019s Blavatnik School of Government<\/a>, which points to Greece as one of the strictest EU countries as far as governmental COVID-19 measures are concerned. Rather than that, I am referring \u2014purely indicatively, and among an archipelago of examples\u2014 to the Tsiodras-Lytras study scandal<\/a>. On 1 December 2021, Greece\u2019s PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis claimed, from the Hellenic Parliament\u2019s podium, that the existence or inexistence of an adequate number of Intensive Care Units does not make any difference whatsoever to the survival prospects of intubated COVID-19 patients in need of admission to an ICU<\/a>; Just a spare bed and an intubation would perfectly suffice. \u2018We have no indication whatsoever to that effect. I don\u2019t have any indication whatsoever! Should the Opposition have any proofs to the contrary, we\u2019re looking forward to receiving them<\/a>\u2019. However, as the Greek people would haplessly come to know post eventum<\/em>, the office of the Greek prime minister had been notified in advance<\/a> of his parliamentary address of a then forthcoming study by Professors S. Tsiodras and Th. Lytras \u2014Prof. Sotiris Tsiodras being the equivalent Greece\u2019s Anthony Fauci, and for all intents and purposes the government-picked \u2018face\u2019 of Greece\u2019s management of the COVID-19 crisis for 2020 and a sizable portion of 2021\u2014, published on 13 December 2021<\/a> in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health<\/em>, which provided proof of precisely the opposite claim to the one defended by Greece\u2019s prime minister on the parliament\u2019s podium. A prosecutor\u2019s investigation has been ordered on the scandal<\/a>. The political \u2014and, indirectly, governmental\u2014 backlash on the two scientists, \u2018Greece\u2019s Fauci\u2019 Prof. Tsiodras and Prof. Lytras, for undermining the PM\u2019s claims has been too grim to describe; let it suffice to quote a 2 January 2022 twitter comment by Prof. Lytras apropos of both the published paper and the hype surrounding the movie \u2018Don\u2019t Look Up\u2019: \u2018I\u2019m grateful we tried\u2026 #DontLookUp #\u03bc\u03b5\u03bb\u03b5\u03c4\u03b7_\u03c4\u03c3\u03b9\u03bf\u03b4\u03c1\u03b1<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other examples include official statements, on 31 March 2020, that face masks are not only unnecessary<\/a>, but potentially dangerous as well<\/a>; later, this was turned into mandatory masks in all indoors and outdoors <\/em>spaces<\/a> under penalty of a EUR 300 fine. Disagreeing with the former statement was criticised by government-friendly media as \u2018unscientific\u2019 in April 2020; disagreeing with the latter is criticized as \u2018unscientific\u2019 ever since. That this enforced confluence, to the point of identification, of governmental decisions and a purported singular, never-changing Science acts to the detriment of popular confidence in the scientific method should need no further explanation. Indeed, it has been pointed out by Greece\u2019s independent media platform The Press Project<\/a> that this usurpation of the voice of a singular Science by a government in a bipartisan political stage, with every criticism being labelled as the shrieks of the conspiracy-theorising \u2018sprayed ones\u2019, points to the \u2018discourse on the sprayed ones as the hegemonic discourse of power<\/a>\u2019 that, in practice, undermines the authority of the scientific method in the name of the political game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This context acts as a crucial backdrop in understanding the nuances of the \u2018Church and COVID-19\u2019 as a <\/em>\u2018religion and science\u2019 debate in Greece; how this was played out, and why the situation is indeed more complex than initially imagined. There is no two-dimensional spectrum of \u2018accepting\u2019 or \u2018rejecting\u2019 scientific evidence; rather than that, there is a two-year-long political weaponization of the authority of science (which, indeed, undermines<\/em> the authority of the scientific method on a long-term basis), there are the problems, tensions, and polarisations that this engenders, and of course, on the fringes, there\u2019s also a tiny yet merry minority of actual anti-science conspiracy theorists allegedly discovering microchips in COVID-19 vaccines. However, mistaking the latter atomic-particle-sized minority with Greece\u2019s complex debate at large would play into the hand of a rather dangerous game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Institutional Religion and Religion \u2018in the Field\u2019: COVID-19, the Orthodox Church of Greece, and Dissenting Voices<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Greek public square and discourse is perpetually characterised by a tense relationship with the Orthodox Church of Greece. On the one hand, Greece regularly appears in surveys (from the Pew Research Center<\/a> to Greece\u2019s DiaNEOsis<\/a>) as having one of the highest EU scores in \u2018believing in God\u2019, \u2018trusting the Church as an institution\u2019, \u2018deeming religion as important\u2019 \u2014 while seven out of ten Greeks will readily reject statements such as \u2018when science and religion disagree, religion is right\u2019 (p. 77, B10.3<\/a>). The flip side of this coin is that the Church\u2019s prominence, impact, influence, and power engenders frictions and a certain discontent; for example, there is hardly a time in which demands of a France-style separation of Church and State are not present in Greece\u2019s public discourse (which are not always characterised by a firm grip on facts by either side, as the utterly chaotic 2018\/19 debate on proposed Church-State relations reforms so aptly demonstrated). Greeks relish in firmly believing that there is a Greek exceptionalism in Church-State relations, in which every other Western country<\/em> has a full Church-State separation, in which religion is hermetically banished from the public square, from politics, and from finances, while Greece, woefully, \u2018finds herself still in the Middle Ages\u2019 by not having achieved this. The problem, of course, in framing the question in such a way is that it becomes virtually impossible to successfully propose a political solution of a Greek Church-State separation based on European precedents and best practices, as it would \u2018never be enough\u2019 if it\u2019s not French la\u00efcit\u00e9; the practical outcome of this is that nothing ever changes and the status quo <\/em>is most successfully defended by those that purport to undermine it. And while Greece does not have as tight economic Church-State ties as other EU countries, e.g. the de facto<\/em> capital of the European Union, Belgium, where the federal government pays the salaries and pensions of a number of religions\u2019 clergy, municipalities pay for the upkeep of churches and provinces pay for larger buildings such as cathedrals<\/a>, its Church-State relations are indeed close-knit: article 3 of Greece\u2019s constitution<\/a> describes the Eastern Orthodox Church as \u2018the prevailing religion in Greece\u2019, the salaries of a very sizable part of the clergy (~9.500, plus about half a thousand unsalaried clergy) are paid by the state (yet the state offers no other types of direct financial assistance, in contrast, for example, to Germany<\/a>), the commencement of a new parliamentary cycle after national elections is blessed by the Church in the parliament building, the religion course at school is predominantly Orthodox, etc. And, of course, Greece houses the monastic community of Mount Athos in the peninsula of Chalkidiki, \u2018a self-governed part of the Greek State\u2019 of \u2018ancient privileged status\u2019 according to article 105 of Greece\u2019s constitution<\/a>. (It is interesting to note that although this peninsula is inhabited by monks leaving \u2018the world\u2019 in order to die after a life of prayer and solitude in Athos\u2019 monasteries and hermitages, the COVID-19 situation in Mount Athos and the health status of monks regularly preoccupies the Greek media cycle during the pandemic, with abbots of Athonite monasteries accusing other monks as not being vaccinated<\/a> and so on.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this chaotic setting, it is important to distinguish between the institutional church\u2019s stance vis-\u00e0-vis the pandemic and further anecdotal evidence, duly explaining both. That is, in order for a proper critical assessment of the situation in Greece to be feasible, certain important distinctions need to be made: individual pronouncements and activities of this or that low- or higher-ranking cleric are of course to be taken into account, as anecdotal evidence of facts on the ground, in order for the big picture to emerge. However, in assessing the stance of the Orthodox Church of Greece during the pandemic as an official, institutional body wielding a degree of social power and impact, one has to look at those having the authority <\/em>to represent it. Who has the authority <\/em>to represent<\/em> the Church of Greece as an institutional, official body? The Holy Synod of 80+ bishops as a body<\/em> and its official resolutions and decisions, the more versatile, 12-member \u2018Permanent Holy Synod\u2019, and the Archbishop of Greece, who stricto sensu <\/em>is not Greece\u2019s primate but merely the chairman of the Synod and who was in line with the Synod\u2019s decisions throughout the pandemic (something which, by the way, was not the case during the 2018\/2019 political turmoil on proposed reforms in Church-State relations; there, the Synod and the Archbishop seemed to be of different minds, the former opposing the reform, the latter endorsing it. The Synod won this battle, the Archbishop\u2019s proposal was rejected, and the Archbishop was subsequently called to act as a mere representative of the decision-making body \u2014 the Synod). This being the case, the stance of the Orthodox Church of Greece throughout the pandemic is to be located in the texts, decisions, resolutions, announcements and responses of the Holy Synod as a body<\/em>, as well as of the Permanent Holy Synod and the Archbishop of Athens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, on the Church and the pandemic in Greece, a brief timeline would be in order here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n