30 June 2017

A new challenge facing
the new Primus in Scotland

With Bishop Mark Strange at a recent conference in Edinburgh

Patrick Comerford

Bishop Mark Jeremy Strange, the Bishop of Moray, Ross and Caithness, became the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church this week. He was elected at an Episcopal Synod in Edinburgh on Tuesday [27 June 2017] in succession to the Most Revd David Chillingworth, who was born in Dublin and who stepped down this month after eight years in office.

Bishop Strange was born in 1961, and studied theology at the University of Aberdeen and Lincoln Theological College. He was ordained deacon in 1989 and priest in 1990. After serving as a curate and a vicar in the Diocese of Worcester, he returned to Scotland in 1998 and was elected Bishop of Moray, Ross and Caithness in 2007.

After his election as Primus this week, Bishop Strange said: ‘I am humbled by the confidence shown in me by my colleagues and I will seek to serve the church as Primus with love and strength.’

Bishop Mark is married to Jane – a teacher in Inverness – and they have a son and two daughters.

His election comes immediately after the General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church voted to permit same-sex marriage. The vote earlier this month amended canon law on marriage, removing the stipulation that it is between a man and a woman.

His election also came days before today’s planned consecration by a group of objectors of Canon Andy Lines as a ‘missionary bishop’ for Europe. Andy Lines is the chief executive of the mission agency Crosslinks, which fundraises using images of poverty in Africa yet uses funds raised in Ireland to organise and support conferences on debates that are internal to the Anglican Communion, including sexuality.

Gafcon said the decision to appoint Andy Lines was a ‘missionary bishop’ came in response to the vote in the Scottish general synod. But the response and the decision had been prepared weeks in advance.

Gafcon said: ‘This consecration comes in the context of a global reformation that is happening in the Anglican Communion. While Anglican provinces such as the Episcopal Church (USA), Anglican Church of Canada, and Scottish Episcopal Church are rejecting the authority of the Bible, faithful Anglicans are uniting through Gafcon to proclaim and defend the unchanging truth in a changing world.’

Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury has written to all other Anglican Primates warning them about Andy Lines’s appointment. But Archbishop Glenn Davies of Sydney, Bishop Richard Condie of Tas¬mania, and other Gafcon bishops are expected to take part in today’s illicit consecration.

It must come as a surprise to some while they say Andy Lines is a ‘missionary bishop’ for Europe, the event is taking place in the Edman Chapel at Wheaton College in Illinois. It has echoes of the furtive consecrations of ‘wandering bishops’ or episcopi vagantes.

As for Wheaton College, it is not an Anglican foundation and it is not open to the normal standards of academic inquiry. It requires its teaching staff to affirm a belief in an historical Adam and Eve, although they can teach animal evolution. Two years ago, Wheaton disciplined Professor Larycia Hawkins, who agreed with Pope Francis Christians and Muslims worship the same God, and she subsequently resigned.

The people taking part in today’s consecration described themselves as ‘conservative evangelicals.’ But it is hard to see how they can be described as either when they neither want to conserve or value Anglican traditions, nor want to prioritise mission over confrontation.

The Greeks have a word
for it: (2) philoxenia

Welcome to my world ... a front door in a back street in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Irish people like to think of Ireland as the land of a hundred thousand welcomes. English people have always put a high value on hospitality – although I fear the ‘Brexit’ referendum a year ago and its aftermath raises doubts about whether hospitality is widely cherished as an English value today.

But our concepts of welcome and hospitality come nowhere close to the way these values are expressed by Greeks.

The baker beside my apartment welcomed me back as I was buying bread for breakfast yesterday morning, and wanted not only to assure me that he remembered me but to be assured that I remembered him. In the newsagent, I was asked how long I am here for ‘this time’ – it not only conveys the memory that I have been here before but contains the hope that I would be here many more times too.

The Greek concept of welcome implies that the stranger is becoming a friend. It is not a tourist marketing ploy. It is not a cheap expression of gratitude for return business. It is simply a part of the Greek nature and culture to welcome the stranger or the foreigner. And the Greeks have their own word for it – φιλοξενία (philoxenia).

In classical Greece, hospitality was a right, and a host was expected to see to the needs of the guests. The ancient Greek term xenia, or theoxenia, expressed this ritualised guest-friendship relation: welcoming the guest was welcoming a god. In classical Greece, someone’s ability to abide by the laws of hospitality determined nobility and social standing.

The Stoics regarded hospitality as a duty inspired by Zeus himself. The word φιλοξενία (philoxenia), from φῐ́λος (phílos), a loved one who is more than a ‘friend,’ and ξένος (xénos), a ‘stranger’ of ‘outsider,’ is used by Plato, Polybius, Philo of Alexandria and others to express the warmth properly shown to strangers, and the readiness to share hospitality or generosity by entertaining in one’s home.

It is a word that is used constantly in the epistles in the New Testament.

Saint Paul speaks of κοινωνοῦντες τὴν φιλοξενίαν διώκοντες (Romans 12: 13), or the importance of contributing to the needs of the saints (those inside the Church) and extending hospitality to strangers (those from outside who must be welcomed).

In Hebrews 13: 2, the author uses the phrase τῆς φιλοξενίας μὴ ἐπιλανθάνεσθε when saying: ‘Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.’

To be hospitable (Φιλόξεον, philoxeon or φιλόξενος philoxenos) or to show hospitality (ξενοδοχέω, xenodocheo) occur too in I Timothy 3: 2; Titus 1: 8, I Peter 4: 9, and I Timothy 5: 10. For example: ‘she must be well attested for her good works, as one who has brought up children, shown hospitality (ἐξενοδόχησεν), washed the saints’ feet, helped the afflicted, and devoted herself to doing good in every way’ (I Timothy 5: 10).

One of the requirements of a bishop in the New Testament Church is to be ‘hospitable,’ to be welcoming to strangers (I Timothy 3: 2; Titus 1: 8).

But the NRSV translation shows its weaknesses in these passages. It is not enough to translate the words as hospitality or welcome; it is hospitality towards the stranger, it is welcoming the outsider, the stranger, the foreigner, the person who is different who comes among us. And in the list of priorities, care for others, for children and hospitality to the stranger come before looking after the needs of church members, described here are washing the saints’ feet.

The concept and the duty of philoxenia is in contrast to φιλία (philia), for it is easy to love those who are like us, from the same family or locality, and is in contrast to xenophobia, the fear of the stranger or the other, which is both unfounded and obsessive – and which has grown in Greece in recent decades and found expression in disgusting far-right groups.

The Christian virtue of philoxenia has its roots in the injunctions to hospitality in Leviticus 19: 18 and 34. We are not just to love our neighbours as ourselves, but: ‘The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.’

Despite what is being said in the current debate dividing Anglicanism and many other Christian traditions, the sin of Sodom (see Genesis 19) was to refuse to welcome the stranger. The Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 109, makes it clear. For 1,700 years after the destruction of Sodom, ancient Jews linked the destruction of Sodom to the refusal of hospitality, not to homosexuality.

What we often call ‘hospitality’ is really entertaining, and typically we offer it to friends who will reciprocate by inviting us back. Hospitality to strangers is not entertaining friends or neighbours. Philoxenia is much more than that. Philoxenia turns on its head xenophobia and any other irrational attitude to those who are different, those who are strangers, those who come from the outside.

Even the Greeks have a
word for it: (1) neologism

Struggling to find the Greek word for cherries in the supermarket this morning (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

I grew up often hearing the phrase ‘the Greeks have a word for it.’

But I have sometimes wondered whether the Greeks invented this phrase, or English-speakers invented it to cover the inadequacies of our language, and the way it sometimes leaves us without simple words to express complex or passionate thoughts.

This morning, as I went shopping in my local supermarket in Platanes for fruit for breakfast, I struggled to find the words for every-day fruits, although there was no need to – every Greek in resorts and shops like this speak fluent English, and speak it perfectly.

So, where did the phrase come from?

And what words do the Greeks have that leave us English-speakers feeling verbally inadequate?

Each time I return to Greece, I feel I have lost more of my fluency, but still I persist in trying to recover my ability to use this beautiful and expressive language that has shaped our ideas and the ways we express concepts, emotions, values and beliefs.

Last night, having arrived in Rethymnon almost at midnight, and I struggled in English and weak Greek in the one restaurant nearby that was still open to order a late-night meal. I need to improve both my vocabulary and my confidence in using it.

But it was not the Greeks who invented the phrase ‘the Greeks have a word for it.’

Instead, as far as I can discover, the phrase may have been used first in 1930 when a play called The Greeks Had a Word for It opened on Broadway on 25 September. The play was written by Zoe Akins (1886-1958), who is generally credited with coining the phrase. Perhaps she is better known for winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play The Old Maid in 1935.

The Greeks Had a Word for It is a comedy about three young women who might have been called ‘gold diggers’ and their hunt for wealthy men as suitable prospective husbands. But the ‘It’ referred to something that could not be mentioned on stage in those days of censorship.

When Twentieth Century Fox made a film version of the play in 1932, starring Joan Blondell, Madge Evans and Ina Claire, the original title of the film was The Greeks Had a Word for Them. The producers worried that the word ‘It’ would be deemed too blatantly salacious by the censors and so changed ‘It’ to ‘Them.’

But even the revised title caused worried, and the film was finally released with the title Three Broadway Girls.

In 1953, Zoe Akins’s play The Greeks Had a Word for It was used as the basis for a film starring Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall, How to Marry a Millionaire, and it helped to launch Marilyn Monroe’s career as a top movie star.

Over a decade later, Barry Unsworth, a Booker-prize winning author, had his second novel, The Greeks Have a Word For It published by Hutchinson in 1967. It is set in Athens in the aftermath of the Greek Civil War and draws on the writer’s own experiences teaching English as a foreign language in Greece.

In the book, two men arrive in Athens on the same boat. Kennedy is an Englishman intends to make a living teaching English and devises a scam to make money fast; Mitsos is returning to Greece after many years away but finds it impossible to escape the memories of the brutal deaths of his parents at the hands of fellow Greeks during the civil war and seeks an early an opportunity for revenge. The two men meet briefly as they disembark the boat but their stories then diverge only to come together at the end of the book with fatal results.

Today, the phrase provides journalists with easy, cheap and quick headlines about Greek politics or scandals involving Greek-born people. For example, when Vicky Pryce was found guilty of perverting the course of justice in 2013, the Daily Telegraph inevitably placed the headline over a comment piece by Allison Pearson: ‘Vicky Pryce trial: The Greeks have a word for it...’

Vicky Price was born Vasiliki Courmouzis. The columnist must have thought herself very well-educated as she mused: ‘The English, public school-educated [Chris] Huhne probably realised that he would be no match in open court for his Greek wife, whom blind fury had turned from respected senior civil servant and Companion of the Order of the Bath into Clapham’s answer to Clytemnestra.’

But I am losing the plot. It is a myth(μῦθος, mythos) to think that the in every case the Greeks have a word for it.

Greek does not have a word for it, well not everything, and modern Greek has fallen behind on new words, especially needed for technology and new trends. As a consequence, the Greek Academy spends time at its meetings each month deliberating on, inventing and approving new Greek words so as to convey new foreign meanings into Greek.

Even the Greeks have a need for a neologism – they call it νεολογισμός (neologismós).