The Trinity, the “Prevailing Religion,” and the Greek Constitution

Effie Fokas, Senior Research Fellow, Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy; Research Associate, London School of Economics Hellenic Observatory

The implications, potential and real, of the references to religion in the Greek Constitution entail a perennial socio-legal conundrum in Greece and the subject of intense legal and political debate. In this post, I will introduce readers to those references to religion in the text of the constitution and explore some ways in which they have both potential and real impact upon Greek socio-legal life.

The Current Greek Constitution and Sacramental Categories

The current Greek Constitution was drafted in 1974 following the end of a military dictatorship; it came into effect in 1975 and underwent amendments in 1986, 2001, 2008, and 2019. Consistently, however, since its 1974 formulation, the Constitution of Greece is  presented “[i]n the name of the Holy and Consubstantial and Indivisible Trinity”; these are the words the reader first encounters under the title, “The Constitution of Greece.” To the general reader, “consubstantial” will be a rather unintelligible theological notion; it means “of one and the same substance, essence, or nature” and denotes here the oneness of the three “persons” of the Trinity—God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. (more…)

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God in Grundgesetz

Justin Collings is Francis R. Kirkham Professor of Law at Brigham Young University J. Reuben Clark Law School and author of Democracy’s Guardians: A History of the German Federal Constitutional Court, 1951-2001 (Oxford University Press, 2015)

God is in the Grundgesetz—Germany’s Basic Law or postwar constitution—and right there at the beginning, the first proper noun in the entire document. “Conscious of their responsibility before God and man . . . ,” the preamble begins, and God comes first.

By putting God in the preamble, the Basic Law’s framers were not simply following tradition. The Weimar Constitution made no mention of God, nor did Bismarck’s Constitution for the German Empire, nor did the abortive “Paul’s Church” Constitution of 1848. And nor, most famously, did the U.S. Constitution of 1787, the oldest written constitution of them all. So what led the Basic Law’s framers to invoke—or at least to mention—God in the Constitution of 1949?

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Church Closures, Religious Freedom, and the Coronavirus Pandemic: Assessing the Christian Legal Movement’s Response

Andrew Lewis is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Cincinnati

 

 

 

 

Daniel Bennett is Associate Professor of Political Science at John Brown University and Assistant Director at the Center for Faith and Flourishing

 

 

 

 

 

During the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, many state and local governments enacted restrictions on large gatherings in an effort to slow the spread of the virus. Restaurants were closed, concerts and sporting events canceled, store capacities limited, and Sunday worship services halted. It was a sudden and seismic shift in the American way of life.

Religious Americans generally complied with orders pertaining to worship services, but many also expressed concerns about such regulation of religious life. Across several national surveys, white evangelicals were more likely than others to support churches defying government restrictions. Moreover, there were clear partisan gaps coinciding with support or opposition to these restrictions. Additionally, one study linked defiant attitudes to whether states had either no restrictions or strong restrictions, and another study connected defiance to trust in Fox News. In general, the politics of COVID restrictions on churches reflect the growing polarization of religious freedom, one that is poised to play a major role in future—and, in many ways, current—culture wars.

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