Greece's main religion is Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Depending on the survey, about 80 to 90 per cent of Greeks identify as Orthodox, one of the highest levels of attachment to a single church in Europe. The constitution names Orthodoxy the "prevailing religion". The Church of Greece is closely tied to the state, which pays its clergy, and to Greek national identity. The largest minority is Muslim, made up of a historic community in Thrace protected by treaty since 1923 and more recent immigrants. There are also Catholics, concentrated on some Aegean islands, a small Jewish community and a growing number of Greeks with no religion.
A Church That Is Almost a State Church
Article 3 of the Greek constitution of 1975 declares that "the prevailing religion in Greece is that of the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ", and describes the Church of Greece as self-governing but united in doctrine with the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul. Greece has no formal state church, but the connection is close. The state pays the salaries of around 10,000 priests. New governments are sworn in by the Archbishop of Athens, with ministers taking a religious oath unless they ask for a civil one. Religious education in state schools follows Orthodox teaching, although pupils may opt out.
The constitution also forbids proselytism, the active attempt to convert people from another faith. In 1993 the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Greece in Kokkinakis v. Greece, a case brought by a Jehovah's Witness who had been convicted for discussing his faith with a neighbour. It was the first ruling by the court that a state had violated freedom of religion.
The Church's organisation reflects Greek history. The Church of Greece declared its independence from the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1833, soon after Greek independence, and the Patriarchate recognised it in 1850. The territories Greece gained later kept different arrangements. The Church of Crete is semi-autonomous, while the Dodecanese islands and Mount Athos still answer directly to the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul.
Where Paul Preached
Greece is one of the oldest Christian lands. According to the Acts of the Apostles, the apostle Paul crossed from Asia Minor around 49 CE and baptised a merchant woman named Lydia at Philippi, in Macedonia, traditionally counted as the first Christian convert in Europe. He preached in Thessaloniki, addressed the Athenians on the Areopagus hill below the Acropolis, and spent eighteen months in Corinth. Five of the New Testament letters, two to Thessalonica, two to Corinth and one to Philippi, are addressed to churches in Greece. On the island of Patmos, a cave is venerated as the place where John wrote the Book of Revelation, and the cave and the monastery above it are a World Heritage Site.
Christianity became the dominant religion under the Roman and then Byzantine emperors. Theodosius I's laws of the 390s closed pagan temples and banned sacrifice, and the ancient Olympic Games, held in honour of Zeus, ended soon afterwards. Many ancient temples, including the Parthenon, were converted into churches.
The Holy Mountain and the Monasteries in the Air
Greece holds two of the most remarkable monastic sites in Christianity. Mount Athos, on the easternmost of the three peninsulas of Chalkidiki, is a self-governing monastic republic of twenty monasteries with around 2,000 monks. It has existed for more than a thousand years. Since the Middle Ages women have been barred from the peninsula, and even male visitors need a special permit. The number issued each day is strictly limited, with a small quota for non-Orthodox visitors. Athos is a World Heritage Site and one of the great repositories of Byzantine art and manuscripts.
In Thessaly, the monasteries of Meteora sit on the tops of great sandstone pillars rising hundreds of metres above the plain. Monks first settled there as hermits and founded the monasteries in the fourteenth century, and until the twentieth century many could be reached only by ladders or by being hauled up in nets. Six are still active. Our guide to Meteora describes them.
Easter, Name Days and the Fifteenth of August
Easter is the most important festival of the Greek year, more so than Christmas. During Holy Week, churches are draped in black, and on Good Friday evening the epitaphios, a flower-covered bier representing Christ's tomb, is carried through the streets. On Holy Saturday a flame from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the Holy Light, is flown to Athens and received with state honours before being carried to churches across the country. At midnight the lights go out, the priest announces "Christos anesti", "Christ is risen", and the congregation lights candles from his. On Sunday, families roast whole lambs on spits and crack red-dyed eggs against each other.
Many Greeks celebrate their name day, the feast of the saint they are named after, more than their birthday. The Dormition of the Virgin on 15 August is the high point of the summer. Pilgrims crowd the island of Tinos, some crawling on their knees up the road from the harbour to the church of Panagia Evangelistria, which holds an icon believed to work miracles.
Chapels, Shrines and Fasting
Orthodoxy is visible across the Greek landscape. The islands and mountains are dotted with small whitewashed chapels, many built by families to fulfil a vow after a rescue at sea, a recovery from illness or a safe return from abroad. Most open for services only once a year, on the feast day of their saint, when the surrounding village holds a panigyri, a festival with food, music and dancing. Along the roads stand small metal or stone shrines called kandylakia, often with an icon and an oil lamp. Many mark the site of a fatal accident, and others give thanks for a narrow escape.
The Orthodox calendar also includes long periods of fasting, when observant believers give up meat, dairy and often fish and oil. The most important is Great Lent, before Easter. It begins with Clean Monday, Kathara Deftera, a public holiday when families go to the countryside to picnic on fasting foods such as flatbread, olives and seafood and to fly kites. Many Greeks who rarely attend church still observe the fast in Holy Week.
1923: Religion Decided Nationality
Religion defined who counted as Greek in the most dramatic way in 1923. After the war between Greece and Turkey, the Treaty of Lausanne arranged a compulsory population exchange based on religion rather than language. About 1.2 million Orthodox Christians were moved from Turkey to Greece, many of whom spoke Turkish, and about 400,000 Muslims were moved from Greece to Turkey, many of whom spoke Greek. Two communities were exempted: the Greeks of Istanbul and the Muslims of Western Thrace. The exchange explains why so many Greek towns have neighbourhoods named "Nea", "New", after the Anatolian towns the refugees came from, such as Nea Smyrni in Athens.
The Muslims of Thrace and the Mosque of Athens
The Muslims of Western Thrace, in north-eastern Greece, number roughly 100,000 to 120,000. They include Turkish speakers, Slavic-speaking Pomaks and Roma. The Treaty of Lausanne still guarantees their rights, including state-appointed muftis who could apply Islamic law in family matters. Since 2018, doing so has been optional for the families concerned. The towns of Komotini and Xanthi have many mosques.
Athens was for a long time the only capital in the European Union without an official mosque, even though tens of thousands of Muslim immigrants lived there and prayed in basements and flats. After years of legal and political obstacles, a state-funded mosque opened in the Votanikos district in 2020, the first official mosque in the city since the Ottoman era. Religion across the Aegean is compared in our overview of religion in Turkey.
Catholic Islands, Romaniote Jews and Ancient Gods
Greece's Catholics are concentrated on the Cycladic islands of Syros, Tinos and Naxos, a legacy of centuries of Venetian rule. On Syros, the Catholic town of Ano Syros and the Orthodox port of Ermoupoli stand side by side, each with its own bishop. Greece's Jewish community is small today, about 5,000 people. It includes the Romaniotes of Ioannina, a Greek-speaking Jewish community older than the Sephardic arrivals of the fifteenth century. Most of Greek Jewry was murdered in the Holocaust, especially the great community of Thessaloniki, as our guide to the Balkan countries explains. A few thousand Greeks follow a revived worship of the ancient Olympian gods, which the state formally recognised as a religion in 2017.
A Changing Relationship
The link between church and state has been loosened step by step. Civil marriage was introduced in 1982. In 2000 the government removed religion from national identity cards over fierce Church protests, and Archbishop Christodoulos gathered millions of signatures against the change. Cremation was legalised in 2006, although the first crematorium did not open until 2019. In February 2024 Greece became the first Orthodox-majority country to legalise same-sex marriage, against the Church's opposition. Surveys show attendance falling and more young people describing themselves as non-religious, but the Orthodox calendar still structures the year, and most Greeks are still baptised, married and buried in church.