Orthodox Church lost adherents as the majority of Albanians became Muslim. Movement for establishing an autocephalous Albanian Orthodox Church In the 19th century, Orthodox Albanians under the Patriarchate of Constantinople had liturgy and schooling in Greek, which was also the lingua franca in the South, and in the late Ottoman period their political thinking was divided: although most Orthodox Christians wished for the end of Ottoman rule, some of them - especially the upper class - desired to be part of a Greek state, some sought Greek-Albanian cooperation and a Greek-Albanian federation state or dual monarchy, and some who sought Albanian statehood. For Orthodox Albanians, Albanianism was closely associated with Hellenism, linked through the faith of Orthodoxy, however during the Eastern crisis this premise was rejected by some Albanian Orthodox because of the growing competition between the Albanian and Greek national movements over parts of Epirus. These issues also generated a reaction against Greek nationalists that drove the Albanian desire to stress a separate cultural identity. The religious division among Albanians meant that Albanian nationalism could not be based on religion and instead Albanian nationalism as it developed tended to promote interreligious cooperation, from the point of its inception in the writings of Naum Veqilharxhi. Although the Orthodox were a minority among Albanians, the Albanian nationalist movement began among the Orthodox, and subsequently spread to other religious communities among Albanians. Orthodox Albanians especially in the diaspora and from Korçë and its nearby regions began to affiliate with the movement by working together with Muslim Albanians regarding shared socio-geopolitical Albanian interests and aims, causing concerns for Greece because it threatened the aspirations to incorporate Epirus into Greece, and because those Greeks who sought an Albanian-Greek confederation took a negative view of other foreign influences among Albanians. Although Greek schools were for a while the only way Orthodox children could become educated and at Greek schools children where they were exposed to Greek nationalism, Orthodox Albanians would instead come to play an active and often leading role in the Albanian national independence movement, often at great cost to themselves and their families. At the onset of the twentieth century, the idea to create an Albanian Orthodoxy or an Albanian expression of Orthodoxy emerged in the diaspora at a time when the Orthodox were increasingly being assimilated by the Patriarchate and Greece through the sphere of politics. As Orthodoxy was associated with the