Greece Faces Showdown Over Entry in ID Cards

The Greek Orthodox Church gave the government a two-week deadline Friday to begin talks on keeping religion on state ID cards or face a mass petition drive to force a referendum.

The country’s Socialist leaders appear poised for a showdown.

The government has repeatedly said it will not reconsider its decision to drop the religion entry from mandatory state identity cards. The move was part of Greek efforts to follow European Union trends on privacy protection and civil rights.

“Our decision is final,” declared government spokesman Dimitris Reppas.

The issue has the potential to open serious rifts in Greek society.

The powerful church, which portrays itself as the caretaker of the national identity, organized two anti-government rallies in June that drew a total of nearly 300,000 people.

In his harshest comments so far, Premier Costas Simitis accused the church of trying to mislead Greeks.

“The identity card . . . is totally irrelevant to our religious beliefs, our historical identity and our standing as Greeks,” Simitis said in a nationally televised annual state of the nation address.

He added that any efforts to impose an “identity” on Greeks had “specific objectives and mainly the wielding of power.”

A petition drive would place the church directly into the political process--a question that sharply divides Greeks. Reppas called it “destabilizing.”

More than 97% of the native-born population is baptized into the Greek Church, and Orthodox Christianity is the official religion. But a large number of Greeks object to overt politicking by clergymen, according to polls.

“Once you have started [the petition effort], you can’t easily stop it,” said Metropolitan Ierotheon, who heads the church’s petition committee. “We have the ability for a dialogue until Sept. 14.”

If nothing happens by then, Ierotheon said, Orthodox priests around Greece will read an encyclical calling on followers to participate in the campaign.

The church has said it would like to collect nearly 5 million signatures--about half the total population--to force a referendum. According to the constitution, only the government can call a referendum.

Archbishop Christodoulos, the fiery leader of the church, has described the petition drive as a battle “against the forces of evil.”

“Do not bow your heads toward the forces of evil, which only appear to temporarily have the power,” Christodoulos said in a recent sermon.

Simitis said the religion entry on ID cards was abolished because it ran counter to Greece’s modernization efforts and European outlook. Greece’s religious minorities, including Jews, Muslims and Roman Catholics, welcomed the decision as a way to limit religious discrimination.

But many Orthodox church leaders are wary of the government’s drive to bring Greece into the EU mainstream, seeing it as a threat to the nation’s Christian Orthodox character.

Earlier this week, the church condemned proposals to abolish exams for religion classes in the last two years of high school. Reformers say passing a religion exam should not be a prerequisite for acceptance at state universities.

The church considers it another step toward what it fears most: a formal separation of church and state.