I have been criticised, or given a slight ticking off rather, for talking so much about religion in my Blogs but as religion is always with us and impinges on most people’s daily lives whether they realise it or not it is a little difficult not to talk about it, even if it does spoil the party. (Never talk about religion or politics?) You only have to travel by plane and be forced to take your shoes off at the barrier to know that religion is with you, or at least its effects. Yesterday evening I found in the garden a pamphlet obviously thrown through the gate, and another in the letter box, informing us of a revivalist, evangelist, fundamentalist, whatever you want to call it come to Jesus and be saved meeting to be held in Vamos on April 9th. On one side there is a picture of Jesus, a dead ringer for Tom Cruise, holding out a cup in his right hand and his left hand making a sort of come to me gesture. Sylvester Stallone is standing just behind him. On the reverse we have a photograph of a meeting with the preacher standing at a lectern facing a mixed bag of obviously middle class Americans with open Bibles on their laps and all gazing at Mr Preacher Man with rapt attention. To the side of him is a table with three full glasses of red wine and three plates of what looks like pitta bread. Oh, boy! Goodness only knows what this display is meant to signify. The sixty four thousand dollar question though is, why would anyone want to conduct a revivalist meeting in Crete when 95 percent of the population are Orthodox and have been coming to Jesus from childhood? When we first moved here there was one lady just down the lane, long since dead, who was in fact First Day Adventist and who appeared at the door with The “Watch Tower.” However she was rebuffed and never bothered us again though we remained friendly neighbours.
Easter is nearly with us, the biggest festival in the Greek calendar, much more important than Christmas. There will be a midnight service when the holy flame from Jerusalem will light all our candles (yes, I do go to the service believe it or not though I have a sneaking suspicion that, as it is performed in secret, the holy flame is lit with a modern cigarette lighter but that is just me being cynical). We will kiss those friends and neighbours we feel inclined to kiss (some shepherds, like their goats, are just a little too hairy) and we will say ‘Christ is risen’ to which the response is ‘He is truly risen.’ Guns will be fired in the air and the bonfire lit, usually enormous, and Judas Iscariot is sent to hell in the flames. The year of the Afghanistan invasion, Judas was given a Bush Jnr mask. Now comes the truly superstitious and, if I may say it, ancient pagan bit. If you can get all the way home with your candle still alight so that you can make the sign of the cross in soot on the lintel of the front door, that means good luck for the year. If on the other hand a nasty little wind comes up, maybe unexpectantly so you are not prepared for it, and blows out your candle, woe, woe, and thrice times woe to quote a corny old BBC series.
But getting back to our revivalist meeting attempting to convert the Cretans to a more rational(!) form of Christianity – after all Orthodoxy is riddled with much too much ceremony and services do tend to go on for hours on end. You have to have stamina to be Orthodox, though if you feel like a smoke during the service, you can nip outside and have a quick drag before returning. Keep to the point, Glyn. Yes, well the point is very well put in an article by George Zarkadakis (obviously of a Cretan family if not Cretan himself) who writes in The Athens News – ‘Just as Darwin predicted, the reaction to his ideas from religious believers was a combination of denial and ridicule.’ He goes on to say that evidently although many states in America had banned the teaching of evolution, when the Russians put Sputnik into orbit that was hurriedly changed, Eisenhower realising America was falling scientifically far behind the Soviets. So there you have politics and religion all in one bag. What’s new about that? ‘Congress agreed that the constitutional separation between church and state ought to be enforced in the schools. Federal courts began to try cases where teachers were persecuted by state school boards for teaching evolution. In a series of famous rulings the courts defended science and declared “creationism to be religion, not science. And yet, despite all that, recent polls indicate that only 14 percent of Americans believe in evolution whereas nearly 45 percent completely trust the Biblical version of Adam and Eve and the repacked form of creationism, intelligent design. It seems that no matter what Federal courts decide and what scientists publicly decry, minds are next to impossible to change. Abandoning scientific enquiry, rejecting evidence whenever it clashes with scripture, sanctioning academic liberties on the basis of dogma and obsessed with “proving” religious notions can only result in our world return to the Middle Ages.’ And if some modern Islamists aren’t a good example of this I would like to know what is, which brings me back to the Greeks. Evidently thirty percent accept the Genesis story and another twenty percent strongly doubt the theory of evolution. That’s a pretty hefty slice of the population.
Zarkadakis’s article is lengthy and an excellent argument for the non-existence of God but I cannot quote it in full. He ought to put it on the internet where the controversy still rages in its usual manner, science putting forth arguments, the religious putting forth faith. I wonder how many will be interested enough to attend Mister Preacher Man’s meeting. Good luck to him, that’s what I say.