ABSTRACT
Science and religion scholarship often involves Darwin; let us also begin with such a story. The timing of the appearance of the article is interesting in itself. From 1876 onwards, Darwinian evolution, interpreted through Haeckelian lenses, had started to arrive to Greece, via French and German scholarship. Following the seven-year-long military campaign that was the 1821 Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire, Greece was recognized as a state by the London Protocol of 1828. In the Ottoman Empire, there were large Greek-speaking and Orthodox Christian populations, and many found themselves within the borders of the Greek state in 1832. The Greek Orthodox Church and Orthodox Christianity in general was a second source of national identity. The consolidation of Greek nationalism and of Hellenism was not a linear or quick process.
