Greece: Cornelius Still Awaits Peter

Developments in Greece during the past year suggest a hardening of attitudes toward non-Orthodox Christians. An evangelical publisher was prosecuted for sending by mail copies of the New Testament in modern Greek and evangelistic tracts. Although the material had been sent at the request of high school students, the publisher received a jail sentence—later suspended for three years because of a previous clean record.

During the trial it was revealed that Greek Orthodox clergymen and lay teachers of Orthodox religion in schools had ordered those who received copies of the New Testament to burn them. “It is heresy,” they alleged, “to publish that a person may be saved through faith in Jesus Christ.” According to a high school principal presented as a prosecution witness, “only in the Greek Orthodox Church can one find salvation.” On the other hand, while the trial was proceeding, a Cretan priest bought from the Bible society two hundred copies of the New Testament in modern Greek, distributed them to parishioners, and visited them in their homes.

The Ministry of Social Services refused to grant a permit last summer for a long-established children’s camp at Sounion, under the auspices of the Free Evangelical Church. No clear reason was given, though there was some suggestion of an alleged attempt to proselytize children in the town of Trikkala, where an assembly of Free Evangelicals had been closed by the authorities. No attempt was made, however, to hinder other groups, and the Greek Evangelical Church, the Pentecostals, and others were granted the customary permits.

Both the divinity school and the philosophical school of Athens University have refused to admit as doctoral candidate a Greek Evangelical student who is a B.D. of Edinburgh and a Master of Theology of Princeton. The reason given was that “only Orthodox were entitled to a doctorate.” One cannot help remembering, not only that Orthodox theologians every year take degrees at many non-Orthodox institutions abroad, but that a Greek professor of theology from Athens University is head of the “Ecumenical” School at Bossey, Switzerland.

It is difficult to trace a consistent official policy toward Protestants since the military junta seized power in 1967 with a wispy slogan about reviving the Hellenistic-Christian heritage, designed to bring church and state closer together. Evangelical hopes ran high when the regime appointed as archbishop the royal chaplain Hieronymos. But any “ecumenical” tolerance Hieronymos might have had for Protestants in Greece soured as the WCC began to reflect hostility to the new government of Greece. At the WCC Central Committee meeting in Crete that summer, the new primate revealed he had thrown in his lot with the junta, any criticism of which he stifled by threatening to withdraw his church from WCC membership. Possibly Hieronymos inferred from the anti-junta stance of the WCC that the Greek Protestants (almost all of them in fact non-WCC evangelicals) would also be anti-government and hence “unchristian.” It was Hieronymos also who administered the oath of office to a “viceroy” when King Constantine fled abroad in December, 1967, and who so took offense at renewed international criticism of his country that the Greeks were unrepresented at the WCC’s Uppsala Assembly.

Given such an ally, the junta could afford in the following year to grant a charter relinquishing control over most of the church’s internal affairs to the hierarchy (a longstanding bone of contention). That same year, nothing indicated the pathetic condition of the national church more than the response to an appeal by the archbishop for men to train as priests to fill vacancies in 1,500 parishes. In a land notorious for clergy semi-literate at best, even Hieronymos expressed dismay at the result: “Two thousand and fifty-eight candidates presented themselves. But what a disappointment … when out of that number only one hundred twenty-four were high school graduates.” The church still did nothing to lift the ban on the translation and circulation of the Scriptures in the vernacular (most of the people can barely understand New Testament Greek).

Forbidden also was “proselytism,” while religious freedom is theoretically guaranteed by the constitution. Here we are confronted by the difficulty of defining proselytism. To the Orthodox priest it stands high on any list of indictable offenses; to the evangelical it is part of the Great Commission. One sees himself involved in bringing people to Jesus Christ rather than in making them members of his group; the other sees it differently, and is concerned about losing anyone, however nominal his profession.

Some degree of friction is inevitable, and it is escalated by the over-zealous on either side. Cases that come to court seem to have been initiated by local hierarchical pressures rather than through any concerted policy of the central government. Evangelicals concede that in general justice is fairly administered according to the legal code, and are thankful that this is so, but they might add that a national church has great power and can easily find ways of hindering or harassing an evangelical ministry.

Basic limitations are, moreover, placed upon evangelicals: no open-air meetings are permitted; literature must state plainly its evangelical source; it is illegal to take advantage of age, circumstances, or lack of intelligence in carrying out evangelistic work that might involve making promises, or deceiving any one in order to secure a profession of faith. Colportage work is allowed, though care must be exercised how and to whom tracts are given. One evangelical society prints weekly gospel messages in almost all the country’s magazines and newspapers, operates bookstores, and broadcasts daily evangelistic sermons. But the most fruitful ministry is that of personal evangelism carried out in different ways; indications are that there is many a “God-fearing Cornelius waiting for a Peter.”

Evangelicals, who number only about 15,000 divided among several groups (the Greek population is close to nine million), are very much aware of the need for a Greek evangelical alliance to unite all the country’s believers—not only to carry out God’s work more effectively, but to secure their rights as Greek citizens.

Last fall, at the dedication of a new Greek Evangelical Church building in Thessaloniki, Swiss pastor Werner Schmidt said that the Gospel had spread to the West from Thessalonica 2,000 years ago, and that through the Reformation the same Gospel had come back. One does not, alas, see many signs of it in a decadent state church desperately in need of renewal, though for purposes of a selective ecumenicity that church is part of “a fellowship of churches which accept our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour.” It is heartwarming to find that the WCC gave financial aid to the Greek Evangelical project in Thessaloniki—which in itself, we suspect, will do more for Christ’s Kingdom then a decade’s pitiful wooing of the Orthodox. The WCC’s reputation for championing minority groups could be greatly enhanced by the further encouragement of this tiny member church so akin to that once commended by Paul for steadfastness and faith.

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