Denomination

Church of Greece

Also Known As Ekklesia tes Hellados · Greek Orthodox Church of Greece

Christianity

Origin 1850

The Church of Greece is the autocephalous Orthodox church of the Greek state. It declared its independence of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1833, shortly after the kingdom itself was founded, and was recognised as autocephalous in 1850. It covers the south and centre of the country; the northern dioceses acquired in 1912, and Crete and the Dodecanese, stand in different and carefully defined relations to Constantinople. It remains the established church under the Greek constitution, which brings it both public funding and continual public argument.

Facts

History

Separation or Divergence

Unilateral declaration of autocephaly in 1833; recognised by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1850 1

Practice

Liturgical Language

Greek (liturgical) 1

Finances

Institutional Wealth or Finances

The Church of Greece publishes no consolidated wealth or asset total for the institution as a whole: its roughly eighty metropolises, several hundred monasteries and thousands of parishes each manage and hold their own property independently, with nothing drawn together into one balance sheet. The Church's own Central Ecclesiastical Financial Service (EKYO), through its general director Father Salonon Antonios speaking to the newspaper Kathimerini, states that EKYO's own central annual budget fell from around 23 million euros in 2008 to around 6 million euros by 2016, a decline of roughly 75 percent, driven by the collapse of National Bank of Greece share dividends after 2008 and a 30 to 70 percent drop in rental income across its properties. EKYO's own real estate portfolio at that time comprised 19,000 hectares of arable land, 700 further land plots, 400 office spaces and 260 residences. This is EKYO's own central holding only, not a figure for the Church of Greece as a whole. 10

Basis of the Wealth Figure

Journalistic or Scholarly Estimate 10

Financial Disclosure Regime

Separately from any wealth the Church itself holds, the Greek state has funded clergy pay directly since 1833; under a November 2018 agreement between Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Archbishop Ieronymos, around 10,000 clergy came off the formal civil service payroll while the state continues to fund their salaries through an annual subsidy of around 200 million euros. This state subsidy is government expenditure on clergy pay, not Church-held wealth, and should not be read as evidence of the Church's own asset base. 11

Financial Disclosure Regime

The Church of Greece publishes no unified annual report or consolidated accounts covering the institution as a whole. Its central financial arm, EKYO, discloses its own budget only through statements by its own named officials to the press; each metropolis, monastery and parish maintains and discloses its own finances separately. 10

Wealth Figure As Of Year

2016 10

The report's own publication date; the underlying budget figures it quotes span 2008 to 2016 and are not tied to one single balance date.

Origins

Origin Period

1850 1

Place of Origin

The dioceses of the Ecumenical Patriarchate that fell within the borders of the new Greek kingdom 1

Founder

No single founder. Declared its own independence from the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1833, shortly after the modern Greek kingdom's founding, and was recognised as autocephalous in 1850. 2

A national church formed by administrative separation rather than by one founder, dated in its own record.

Belief

Defining Doctrinal Position

Chalcedonian: two natures in the one person of Christ (Chalcedon, 451) 2

Defining Doctrinal Positionthe subject's own account

Rejects the Filioque: the Spirit proceeds from the Father 3

Position on Sexuality

Same-sex sexual relationships are held contrary to teaching; LGBT individuals are welcomed as members but not ordained, and same-sex unions are not blessed 4

The Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, the autocephalous national church distinct from the Ecumenical Patriarchate, stated unanimously on 23 January 2024 that the duality of the sexes and their complementarity come from God and that Christian marriage is a holy sacrament between a man and a woman, opposing the government's bill to legalize civil same-sex marriage weeks before it passed. Neither source read states whether the Church of Greece withdraws ordinary membership from a gay member; the statement addresses the civil law and the sacrament of marriage throughout.

Sexuality Position Detail

As the Greek government prepared a bill to legalize civil same-sex marriage and adoption, the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, the autocephalous national church of the Greek state under its own governance since 1850, met on 23 January 2024 and stated unanimously that the duality of the sexes and their complementarity are not social inventions but come from God, and that Christian marriage is a holy sacrament through which the grace of God is granted to the union of a man and a woman, not a simple cohabitation agreement. Its spokesman, Metropolitan Bishop Panteleimon, told reporters plainly that the church says marriage is the union of a man and a woman and that is the source of life. Parliament passed the bill on 16 February 2024 despite the church's stated opposition, making Greece the first majority Orthodox nation to legalize civil same-sex marriage. No source found addresses whether the church withdraws ordinary membership from a gay member; both accounts read address the civil law and the sacrament of marriage. 5

Attributions

Church Family

Eastern Orthodox 1

Eastern Orthodox, autocephalous

Organisation

Governance

Self-governing churches under patriarchs, deciding in synod 1 6

Governed by a Holy Synod under the Archbishop of Athens and All Greece

Ordination

Restricted to men 7

Ordination

Married clergy permitted 7

Its own record names it "the autocephalous Orthodox church of the Greek state".

Relation to the State

Established 8

Article 3 of the Greek constitution names Eastern Orthodox Christianity the prevailing religion in Greece, and the state pays the salaries of the Church of Greece's clergy directly.

Status

Status Today

Living tradition, practised today 9

The established church of the Greek state, named in the constitution as the prevailing religion, with clergy salaries paid from the state budget

Trajectory

Membership Over Timethe subject's own account

A 2022 United States Department of State international religious freedom report estimated 81 to 90 percent of Greece's population as Greek Orthodox, a modest decline from the mid-century high but still an overwhelming majority. 12

Membership Over Timethe subject's own account

By 1924, after the Treaty of Lausanne's compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the share had risen to about 89 percent, making Greece the most religiously homogeneous state in the Balkans. 12

Membership Over Timethe subject's own account

In 1912, before the Balkan Wars and the Greek-Turkish population exchange, about 43 percent of the population within Greece's then borders was Greek Orthodox. 12

Membership Figure As Ofthe subject's own account

1912-01-01 12

Membership Figure As Ofthe subject's own account

1924-01-01 12

Membership Figure As Ofthe subject's own account

2022-01-01 12

Basis of the Membership Figurethe subject's own account

Independent Survey 12

Basis of the Membership Figurethe subject's own account

Scholarly or Demographic Estimate 12

Learn More

A Declaration in 1833 and a Recognition in 1850

The separation was made by a government rather than by a synod. The Bavarian regency that governed Greece for the young King Otto declared the church of the kingdom independent of Constantinople in 1833, on the reasoning that a sovereign state could not have its bishops answering to a hierarch resident in the Ottoman capital. The model was Lutheran state-church practice, and the arrangement placed the church firmly under royal authority.

Constantinople did not accept it. For seventeen years the Greek church was in an irregular position, unrecognised by the mother church and unmentioned in the diptychs, until the Ecumenical Patriarchate issued the tomos of 1850 granting autocephaly on its own terms. The delay is remembered in Orthodox argument whenever a church declares independence without waiting, because it is the case most often cited on both sides.

The same regency also dissolved the great majority of Greek monasteries and took their property, an act carried out in the name of reform and remembered very differently inside the church. Together the two measures set the pattern of the church relationship with the modern Greek state: closely bound to it, financially entangled with it, and periodically in conflict with it. Theoklitos Farmakidis defended the state settlement and Konstantinos Oikonomos opposed it, and the argument between their positions ran for a generation.

The New Lands, and What the Map Actually Looks Like

The jurisdiction is not simply the territory of the Greek state, and the exceptions are deliberate rather than accidental.

The dioceses of Macedonia, Epirus, Thrace and the northern Aegean islands, acquired by Greece in 1912 and 1913, are the New Lands. They remain canonically part of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and are administered by the Church of Greece under a patriarchal act of 1928, so their bishops sit in the Greek synod while commemorating the Patriarch of Constantinople. The arrangement is workable and has produced periodic friction over who appoints them.

Crete has its own semi-autonomous church under Constantinople, with its own synod and archbishop. The Dodecanese, Italian-held until 1947, is directly under Constantinople. Mount Athos is under Constantinople as well and holds a self-governing status written into the Greek constitution.

Within the country the church is recognised as the prevailing religion. Clergy salaries are paid from public funds, religious instruction is part of the school curriculum, and the resulting questions about the place of the church in a plural state are argued in parliament rather than in synod. A revision of the constitutional settlement was proposed and not carried in 2018 and 2019, which is a fair indication of how difficult the question is.

Church of Greece

23 entries

Origin Period Start Year

Frequency

Life Stage Marked

Obligation

Scholarly Standing

Social Form

Practice Status

Practitioner

Native To Region

Originated In

Originates In Language

Kind of ritual

Connections

Associated With

Church of Greece (Wikipedia)

This source names Church of Greece directly: "Wikipedia's article on the Church of Greece, read directly for this pass, which states that King Otto's Bavarian regency ratified a royal decree declaring the church's independence on 25 July 1833..."

Source Church of Greece (Wikipedia)

Greece Church Agreement to Take 10,000 Priests Off Payroll (BBC News, 2018)

This source names Church of Greece directly: "between the Greek state and the Church of Greece moving roughly 10,000 clergy off the civil service payroll while the state continues to fund their pay through an annual subsidy of around 200..."

Source Greece Church Agreement to Take 10,000 Priests Off Payroll (BBC News, 2018)

One of the autocephalous churches of the Eastern Orthodox communion.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

Rejected Here

Papal primacy and infallibility

Rome's honour as a see is not in question here. What is rejected is universal jurisdiction over the whole church and the personal infallibility defined in 1870. Primacy among the Orthodox churches is held to be a primacy of honour, not of power.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

The Filioque

The creed is recited here in its original form, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father. The Latin addition of and the Son is rejected both as an unauthorised alteration of a conciliar text and as bad theology, and it remains the principal doctrinal difference with Rome.

Source The Nicene-Constantinopolitan CreedFirst Council of Constantinoplethe holders' own account

Held Differently

Purgatory

This church prays for the dead and holds that the prayers help them, but it does not teach a distinct place of satisfactory punishment or the calculus of temporal penalty that the Western doctrine carries.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

Original sin

What is rejected is the Augustinian transmission of guilt, not the teaching that humanity begins damaged. This church speaks of ancestral sin: what passes from Adam is mortality and a nature inclined to sin, not personal culpability for another's act.

Source Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal ThemesJohn Meyendorff

The Real Presence in the Eucharist

The gifts are held to be truly the body and blood of Christ. The change is confessed without committing the church to the scholastic account of substance and accident that the Latin term transubstantiation carries.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

Governed By Polity

Patriarchal-Synodal Polity

Holds Element

Byzantine Chant

Sung in Greek in the parishes and taught in schools of Byzantine music recognised by the state.

Meteora

The surviving monasteries on the rock pillars are within the metropolis of the Church of Greece in whose territory they stand.

Mount Athos

The mountain lies within Greek territory and its monasteries are outside the jurisdiction of the Church of Greece, which is a distinction readers routinely miss.

The Holy and Great Council of Crete

The Church of Greece attended and signed, having pressed successfully for changes to the text on relations with the other Christian bodies.

Source Official Documents of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, Crete 2016Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

Sunday of Orthodoxy

Terce

Kept in the Church of Greece. The Third Hour is prayed daily from the Horologion and carries the commemoration of the descent of the Holy Spirit.

The Anaphora

Kept in the Church of Greece. The anaphoras of St John Chrysostom and St Basil the Great are used according to a fixed calendar, the longer Basil on ten days of the year.

The Annunciation

The Epiclesis

Kept in the Church of Greece. The epiclesis follows the institution narrative and is held to be the moment of consecration, which is the central Eastern difference from Western eucharistic theology.

The Fraction

Kept in the Church of Greece. The Lamb is broken into four particles marked IC XC NI KA, one placed in the chalice, one for the clergy and two for the communion of the people.

The Holy Trinity

The Lord's Prayer

Kept in the Church of Greece.

The Mass / Eucharist

Kept in the Church of Greece. The Orthodox call it the Divine Liturgy, most often that of John Chrysostom, sung throughout behind an icon screen, with leavened bread and communion given in both kinds from a spoon after preparation by fasting and confession.

The Perpetual Virginity of Mary

The liturgical books name the Theotokos ever-virgin at every service, which is where the doctrine is carried here rather than in a dogmatic definition of its own.

Source Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic ChurchIsabel Florence Hapgood (compiler and translator)

The resurrection of Christ

The Revised Julian Calendar for the Fixed Feasts

The Seven Ecumenical Councils as the Complete Dogmatic Deposit

The Transfiguration

The Words of Institution

Kept in the Church of Greece. The institution narrative is recited within the anaphora, but the consecration is not located in it.

Theophany

Theosis

Salvation is framed as participation in the divine life rather than as a debt discharged. The Palamite distinction between God's unknowable essence and his uncreated energies is what lets union with God be affirmed without the creature being absorbed into the divine essence.

Source Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal ThemesJohn Meyendorff

Theosis (deification)

Theotokos

Affirmed at Ephesus in 431 and repeated in the Chalcedonian Definition. The title is a statement about Christ before it is a statement about Mary: she is God-bearer because the one she bore is God.

Source The Definition of Faith of the Council of ChalcedonCouncil of Chalcedonthe holders' own account

Trinity

Confessed in the words of the creed of Nicaea and Constantinople as this church recites it, without the later Western addition to the article on the Spirit.

Source The Nicene-Constantinopolitan CreedFirst Council of Constantinoplethe holders' own account

Veneration of icons

Kept in the Church of Greece. Orthodoxy defended images at the seventh council and keeps them central: an icon is kissed on entering, censed, carried in procession, laid on a stand for the feast of the day, and kept in a corner of the home. It is written to a received pattern rather than invented, and generally unsigned.

Veneration of saints and Mary

Kept in the Church of Greece. The Orthodox honour Mary as Theotokos, God-bearer, and glorify saints by decision of a synod rather than through a Roman-style process; they reject the Immaculate Conception as answering a doctrine of original sin they do not hold, while keeping the Dormition.

Vespers

Kept in the Church of Greece.

Viaticum

Kept in the Church of Greece. The Byzantine churches reserve the Lamb through the year for it.

Wisdom of Sirach

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account

Wisdom of Solomon

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account

Showing 101 to 126 of 126 in Objects and Practices of This Tradition, page 3 of 3.

Originated In

Greece

Source Church of Greece (Wikipedia)

Originates in Language

Byzantine Greek

The Byzantine rite is celebrated in Greek here, in the received liturgical form of the language rather than in the modern spoken one.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

Related To

Greek Orthodox Church

The Greek Orthodox Church entry covers the tradition; this one is the autocephalous church of the Greek state specifically.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

Uses Liturgical Language

Byzantine Greek

Sources

1. The Orthodox Church

Timothy Ware (Kallistos Ware), Penguin Books, 1993View the Source

2. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition

F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005entries on Greece, the Church of, and on autocephalyView the Source

3. The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed

First Council of Constantinople, 381The Nicene Creed text

Quote, The Nicene Creed text

We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.

the holders' own accountView the Source

4. Greece Becomes First Orthodox Christian Country to Legalize Same-Sex Marriage (Catholic World Report)

Catholic World Report, 2024the stated position on sexuality and its supporting detailView the Source

5. Greece Faces Growing Opposition From the Orthodox Church Over Plans to Legalize Same-Sex Marriage (Associated Press / WSLS)

Associated Press (carried by WSLS), 2024the stated position on sexuality and its supporting detail, corroborating the same statementView the Source

6. Church of Greece (Wikipedia)

WikipediaOriginated In: Greece, Lead

Quote, Originated In: Greece, Lead

Its canonical territory is confined to the borders of Greece prior to the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 ("Old Greece").

View the Source

7. Official Documents of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, Crete 2016

Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, 2016News Bulletin Number 1

Quote, News Bulletin Number 1

The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church commenced on the Sunday of Pentecost, 19 June 2016, with the Pan-Orthodox concelebration of all the Primates of the participating Orthodox Churches.

View the Source

8. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)

Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source

9. 2017 Report on International Religious Freedom: Greece

United States Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, United States Department of State, 2018View the Source

10. Church of Greece Scrambling to Avoid Bankruptcy (Neos Kosmos, 2016)

Apostolos Lakasas, Neos Kosmos, 2016View the Source

11. Greece Church Agreement to Take 10,000 Priests Off Payroll (BBC News, 2018)

BBC News, 2018View the Source

12. Religion in Greece (Wikipedia)

Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia, 2026View the Source

The Definition of Faith of the Council of Chalcedon

Council of Chalcedon, 451Session IV, Definition of Faith

Quote, Session IV, Definition of Faith

Following the holy Fathers we teach with one voice that the Son of God and our Lord Jesus Christ is to be confessed as one and the same Person, that he is perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood, very God and very man.

the holders' own accountView the Source

Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes

John Meyendorff, Fordham University Press, 1979On ancestral sin, deification and the apophatic methodView the Source

Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church

Isabel Florence Hapgood (compiler and translator), Houghton Mifflin, 1906The litanies, which name the Theotokos ever-virginView the Source

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Anointing of the Sick

Baptism

Byzantine Rite

Churching of Women

Confirmation

Divine Liturgy of St Basil

Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom

Funeral Rites

Holy Orders

Infant Baptism and Christening

Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts

Marriage Ceremony

Monastic Tonsure

Monastic Vows

Orthodox Christian Funeral

Orthodox Crowning (Stefana)

Panikhida

The Anaphora

The Epiclesis

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Viaticum

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