98% of the Greek population belongs to the Orthodox Church, the rest of the Greek population is Muslim (1.3%), Roman Catholic, and Jewish. Only a few countries have such a proportion of Orthodox people. The other country is Russia. The Orthodox Church is the third largest branch of Christianity.

It is king Constantine who was the real founder of Orthodoxy when he was converted to Christianity by a vision of the Cross in the 4th century AD. That is how appeared the church as we know today under the name of “Orthodox Catholic Church”. By the 8th century, different opinions started to grow between the pope in Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople.

To quickly explain the history of Orthodoxy, we have to say that St Paul arrived in Macedonia in 49 AD and began to preach all around Greece; the books of the New Testament were written in Greek during the third century AD.

The differences of opinion opposing both spiritual chiefs were some details of belief such as the celibacy of the clergy or some differences in the way of fasting; The main reason of the disagreement, was over the wording of the Creed: Orthodox Church adhered to the idea of the original Creed which stated that the Holy Spirit proceeds “from the Father” whereas Rome added, “and the Son”.
The dispute became so intense that in 1054 the pope and the patriarch excommunicated one another, going their own way as the Orthodox Church (Eastern, Greek/Russian) and the Roman Catholic Church: this separation is called the schism.
This profound religious feeling (Orthodoxy is less an institution than a sentiment) in Greece gives birth to some dark points for a country supposed to be European: for example, even if the Constitution guarantees freedom, things are different than they should be.

Orthodoxy is the national religion in Greece and is considered as the only true and right religion by the majority of the Greeks: etymologically, Orthodox means “right belief”.
It is integral to life in Greece, due to the country’s historical past.

Indeed, during the Ottoman rule despites the clerics’ approval and assistance to the local Turkish governors, Orthodox religion was the most important criterion to define Greek nationality; Greek Church tried really hard to preserve Orthodox faith and the feeling of being firstly Christian than Greek upon the oppress Greek people.

Since then the two notions are intimately linked one another. Indeed, the Muslim minority is the only one acknowledged officially by the Greek government though some Roman Catholic, Jewish, Macedonians and Gypsy minorities exist.
Racial discriminations are quite common in Greece especially until 2001; for it is only from then that the Greek identity card stopped showing the civilian’s religious affiliation.
Racism in Greece grew with the start and the augmentation of Albanian immigration.
Even if officially the Greek state and the Orthodox church are supposed to be separated (like every European country) though it is not written in the Constitution, the Church posses an extremely wide power in Greek society.

She interferes in education (the ministry of education is called “ministry of education and religion” and children are obliged to pray all together every morning, before starting classes) and even in politics (every knew voted law that doesn’t suit the Church’s representatives is followed by great disapprovals).
All that for the visitor to understand that Greece, even if things are changing with its Europeanization, is a profoundly religious (more precisely Orthodox) country full of beliefs, traditions and customs entailing lots of prejudices, discriminations and even racism.
Those are reasons why everyone visiting Greece, especially outside Athens, should take these things in consideration if he wants to have an agreeable and problem free stay.