Last week, I had the opportunity to travel to Athens – a city I had hitherto not visited – for a few days. I felt a distinct sense of déjà vu as I entered the city; it seemed vaguely familiar. Was this because in some ways it felt like some city in India, or perhaps in the Middle-East?
My hosts assured me that I was not alone in feeling this way, there was a certain Middle-Eastern quality to the city. But this was not the only reason that Athens felt vaguely familiar. As I spent the next couple of days exploring museums and monuments – especially the spectacular Acropolis – I realised that the Greek national narrative also bore many similarities to contemporary India.
For example, what is today Greece was once part of the Eastern Roman Empire, which was then conquered by the Ottoman Turks, who styled themselves as inheritors of the Roman emperors, in the 1500s’. While the Emperors were no longer Christian, there was, nevertheless, a certain continuity in terms of the relationship between the imperial centre – Constantinople (contemporary Istanbul) – and the province – contemporary Greece. Despite this fact, however, contemporary national narratives see the Ottoman period, until the Greek revolution and the creation of the nation-state of Greece in the 1830s, as an interruption.
It is not difficult to see why this period is seen as an interruption. The ideology of Greek nationalism sees the nation as Christian, and thus liberation from Ottoman rule is seen, restoration of the space for Christianity within that nation. However, as I found out, Christianity itself does not seem to fare very well within the secular humanist narrative that is also at the heart of
Greek nationalism.
Secular humanism is a philosophical position that rejects Christianity as the basis of ethical and moral reasoning and locates the fonts for morality and ethics in human reason, logic, secular ethics, and philosophical naturalism. The inspiration for this movement, ever since the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, are the philosophies and cultures of ancient Greece. While often presenting itself as neutral and non-partisan, the fact is that secular humanism sets itself up against Christianity, and for this reason systematically rejects the good that Christianity has brought into the world. Nowhere was this rejection as obvious as in the narrative built around the monument of the Parthenon in the Athenian Acropolis.
The Acropolis was the citadel built atop a plateau around which the city of Athens grew. In time, the plateau came to be seen as sacred, particularly to the goddess Athena, and various temples dedicated to her, and other Greek deities, were erected on and around the Acropolis. The greatest of these temples, the Parthenon, built in the fifth century B.C and dedicated to the goddess Athena, has come to be recognised as one of the foremost symbols of the classical Greek world, democracy, and Western civilisation. With the passage of time, however, and with the end of the pagan world, the Acropolis was converted into a church, and under Ottoman rule into a mosque. Finally, in 1687, the Venetian siege of Athens resulted in the destruction of much of the building thanks to a cannon ball striking the gun-powder magazine stored within the Parthenon. Attempts at restoring the building were commenced almost from the very establishment of the modern Greek nation-state.
The pinnacle of these restoration efforts must most certainly be the Acropolis Museum, which has recovered various sculptures associated with the building, housing them under controlled climatic conditions to ensure their preservation for posterity. During my visit to this museum, I was struck by the way in which the Christian engagement with the building was systematically referred to. The erection, and expansion, of the church within the shell of the Acropolis required some structural changes to the building, and also resulted in the removal of statutes of some of the Greek deities. These changes are referred to as being the work of “zealous” and “fanatical” Christians – both these words refer, of course, to the absence of reason, the virtue prized above all by secular humanism.
If one looks dispassionately at the issue, however, one realises that the actions of the Christians were not, in fact, without reason, and corresponds to actions of communities across the world when faced with a change of their religious practice. For example, following the Spanish conquest of Cusco, it is documented that the Incan elite formally disassembled former Incan buildings – dedicated to the prior cult – to be used for laying the foundations of the new churches and convents that were being built. Similar activity has been documented closer home as well. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the Athenians once converted to Christianity, saw little worth in the markers of their old religion, and did away with the pagan sculptures associated with the cult of Athena.
In fact, if there is any unreasonableness, it exists in the secular humanist narrative, that is unreasonably attached to the sculptures of ancient Greece. To call this attachment unreasonable is not to deny the beauty of these sculptures, but to point out that it is unreasonable to privilege beauty over Truth. It might not be wrong to say that what the secular humanist narrative eventually winds up doing is to set up the ancient cult of the Greeks as the object of veneration. Despite all the hype around Athenian democracy – the fact is that it was a slave-owning society, that deprived the vote to both slaves and women. The Athenians converted to Christianity now recognised a greater Truth, that of the resurrected Christ, and recognised that while beauty is important, is exists only to point one in the direction of Christ. Beauty that does not point to Christ, takes us away from Him. It must have seemed worthwhile, therefore, to get rid of pagan statues, no matter how beautiful, if they distracted from the worship of Christ.
My time in Greece afforded me the opportunity to observe in action an insight highlighted by scholars – and I think particularly of the great Talal Asad – who point how secular humanism often seeks to exploit religion for its own ends. In the European case, this is done using the cultural markers of Christianity, even as the national project undermines the Faith to assert itself. This also seems to be the case in Greece, where even as Christianity is presented as the primary value of the country, it operates merely as a convenient vehicle for the eventual triumph of the national project, and concomitantly a return to pagan values.
(Jason Keith Fernandes is a researcher at the Centre for Research in Anthropology (CRIA), Lisbon)