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Greek Religion: Peoples
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Greece Religion: The Greek population is composed of a 97% of Christian Orthodox. The rest of the population is Muslim, Roman Catholic and Jewish. Greece (and the Greek Islands) and Russia are the only countries to have such a great proportion of people that belong to the Orthodox Church.
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Since the legal victory, the Greek government has continued to deny them their religious rights. Pepa is demanding the government register its offices as a place of worship, so that Ellinais could be permitted to perform weddings and other rites. Until their rights are honored, Ellinais will proceed with further court action. "There should be respect for people who want to express their religious freedoms in a different way that is not the typical Orthodox or Christian way," said Pepa.
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Hephaistos: The fire and volcano god Hephaestos was the Greek divine smith, a Lemnian67 version of the Asiatic craftsmen. He parallels the Phoenician god Chursor,68 who was credited as the inventor of iron. In the East, early metalwork and religion were connected, bringing about the rise of the god of metalcrafts. In Anatolia in the late second millennium, the Hittite priest kings were ... smiths.69 The worship of the later smith god spread with the use of iron, yet this also lessened his importance because the smiths" craft became more accessible. In Greece, he was a popular god of the people who maintained his position among the twelve Olympians, yet his worship was unknown on the island of Crete. He does, though, have a connection with Cyprus and in particular with the cult of Aphrodite.
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GREEK religion includes all the varied religious beliefs and practices of the peoples living in Greek lands from the beginning of history to the end of paganism. In contrast to Christianity it had no body of revealed teachings, no common dogma or fixed ritual binding at all shrines and on every worshiper, but each locality might have its own distinctive myths and practices, and the individual might believe what he pleased so long as he did not openly do violence to tradition. No priestly orders attempted to interpose their decrees upon society; local habit alone determined both ritual and belief.
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Greek people ... worshipped foreign gods, if for some reason they thought this might help them somehow. The Egyptian goddess Isis was especially popular in Athens in the Hellenistic period, for instance. And many Hellenistic Greeks worshipped Astarte, too.
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The world, as the Greek philosopher Thales wrote, is full of gods, and all deserve respect and honor. Such a generous understanding of the nature of divinity allowed the ancient Greeks and Romans to accept and respect other people's gods and to admire (rather than despise) other nations for their own notions of piety. If the Greeks were in close contact with a particular nation, they gave the foreign gods names of their own gods: the Egyptian goddess Isis was Demeter, Horus was Apollo, and so on. Thus they incorporated other people's gods into their pantheon.
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