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Looking at religion and Greek identity from the outside: The identity cards conflict through the eyes of Greek minorities

This is the third article emerging out of the research project ‘The Religious Factor in the Construction of Europe: Greece, Orthodoxy and the EU’, funded by the Leverhulme Trust from 2003 to 2005. The starting-point is the 2000 controversy in Greece about whether or not to include religious affiliation on national identity (ID) cards. The goal of the Leverhulme study was to analyse the public debates that occurred over the ID cards issue and related themes as they appeared in the Greek news media and in various political, academic and religious milieux. The analysis is based on two sets of research data. The first source of data is the Greek national daily press in which journalists, scholars, intellectual figures, public officials, church figures and representatives of minority religions expressed their opinions on the ID cards controversy and related issues. Using a systematic qualitative analysis of press content, we examined and compared the key issues, prevalent opinions and supporting arguments on the subject of the inclusion or exclusion of religion on ID cards, as they emerged from an extensive body of newspaper articles. A second source of data includes 34 interviews with carefully selected commentators and persons who were directly or indirectly involved in the ID cards controversy. The ID cards controversy has attracted the attention of a variety of researchers who have viewed it primarily as a political and legal issue indicative of Greece’s close church-state relations (Makrides, 2005) and as an illustration of the strong link between religion and national identity. But the issue of religion and national identity inevitably leads to the question of pluralism and religious minorities. The growing non-Orthodox minorities that have arrived in Greece through immigration since the 1990s are challenging Greece to evolve from a homogeneous nation to a more diverse, multicultural society. Therefore, if the ID cards debate is a useful lens through which to analyse the role of religion in national definition, it is also a window into the status of religious minorities in Greek society. Focusing on the point of view of non-Orthodox religious minorities has the added value of providing a different angle to the conflict: a Greek perspective but outside the Religion, State & Society, Vol. 35, No. 2, June 2007