This thesis investigates the reasons for the idiosyncratic politicization of religion and the Church in Greece and Cyprus, and seeks to account for the production, development and propagation of religious nationalism and the sacralisation of politics in these two countries. It is a study of the birth (1830- 1864), development, and contemporary mutation (1974-2000) of the 'Helleno- Christian' nationalist discourse, which reached its zenith, not in Greece, where it was born, but in Cyprus, immediately before and after independence (1950- 1974). The aim of the project is to explain the political processes whereby this ideology (Helleno-Christianism) attained a hegemonic status in the Greek and Greek-Cypriot political cultures, and to account for the present eminence of this prominent type of Greek nationalism. Hopefully, this thesis fulfils a threefold purpose: firstly, it covers importcint gaps in the relevant historiography on Greek and Greek-Cypriot nationalisms. This 'historical' task is carried out through the analysis of the important role of the Orthodox Church in the consolidation of Greek and Greek-Cypriot national identities. Secondly, this case study is used as a test ground for an alternative theoretical framework in the study of nationalism which may offer solutions to the practical and theoretical problems of the dominant modernist pciradigm. Thirdly, a comparative approach to the study of Greek nationalism in mainland Greece and in Cyprus is adopted- to my knowledge, for the first time- in the following pages. There are two main research questions to be answered by this project: Why and how religion in Greece and Cyprus has been politicized in such manner so that Orthodoxy and nationalism became so closely associated? And, what are the results of this politicization in terms of contemporary Church policy, and national identity awareness in contemporary Greece and Cyprus? In other words, the logic that will be underlying my argument is that in order to understand contemporary Greek nationalism, one has to look back at its formative period.
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