Religion must serve God, not man, says Patriarch Bartholomew

“Wherever you think you see religion still serving prejudice and hatred, you are not seeing true religion,” but rather “the manipulation of religious values to serve a kingdom of Man, and not the Kingdom of God,” said the spiritual leader of the majority of the world’s Orthodox Christians.

Amid his eighth apostolic visit to the U.S. Sept. 14-25, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople addressed attendees at a Sept. 16 State Department dinner in his honor, hosted by Deputy Secretary of State Michael J. Rigas.

Patriarch Bartholomew — who met with President Donald Trump Sept. 15 and who will receive the Templeton Prize on Sept. 24 — told participants at the State Department dinner that “in times past, religion was used to consolidate peoples around specific governments, giving coherence to earthly empires, kingdoms, and nation-states.”

Such usage “is true of all the Abrahamic faiths,” added the patriarch, who was a close friend of the late Pope Francis, and whose longtime concern for the care of creation helped inspire Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si’.”

Acknowledging both “the historical precedence and current realities we face today,” Patriarch Bartholomew asked, “Has not the human family arrived at a point when such rigid forms of conformity no longer serve the interests of the people?”

While noting that many of the world’s self-governing Orthodox churches “are structured around national identities, which include shared history, culture and language,” the patriarch — who governs as a first among Orthodox equals — stressed that “the Orthodox Church does not embrace ethno-phyletism,” or religious nationalism, “as a policy, even when some of our sister churches have done so out of political and even financial expediency.”

Among those churches are the Russian Orthodox Church, which has historically fostered a deep intertwining of religious and national identity, as Georgetown University sociology of religion scholar José Casanova has previously noted.

The Russian Orthodox Church severed communion with Constantinople in 2018 after Patriarch Bartholomew granted self-autonomy to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. In 2019 the patriarch also formally recognized the independence of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

Patriarch Bartholomew, highlighting this year’s 1,700th anniversary of the first ecumenical Council of Nicaea, said that the past “seventeen centuries … bear witness to the many entanglements that have encompassed Church and State through the ages.”

But “as national identities seek to reify themselves around certain characteristics — religion often chief among them — they cut themselves off from the nature of diplomacy, embodied here at the State Department,” said the patriarch.

Instead, diplomacy “means that one is willing to look at circumstances from the point of view of another,” Patriarch Bartholomew explained. “Thus, it requires a capacity, a spaciousness, if you will, to place oneself in another’s condition — to be empathetic, and not only sympathetic.”

Moreover, he said, “Such aptitude is truly apt for every aspect of life, for it keeps one honest about one’s own intentions and motivations.”

The world’s “great religious traditions” should work to “create fields of mutual respect and understanding,” he said.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate seeks “to foster interreligious dialogue, mutual respect, and an understanding of coexistence that often eludes the nations of the world,” he said.

“As followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are called to pursue the Kingdom of God, not any kingdom of Man, no matter how inviting,” said Patriarch Bartholomew.

“Our goal must be to bring the human family together, despite their ethnic, linguistic, racial, and even religious differences,” he said, adding, “And we will use the principles of our Faith to do so. To embrace others, rather than reject them. To value others, rather than debase them. To identify with others, rather than objectify them.”

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